


Warm Bodies: Awakenings

by wilkwo



Category: Warm Bodies (2013), Warm Bodies - All Media Types
Genre: Drama, Gen, Horror, Hurt/Comfort, Post-Zombie Apocalypse, Zombie Apocalypse, Zombies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-06
Updated: 2014-07-01
Packaged: 2018-01-07 16:38:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 34
Words: 56,471
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1122116
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wilkwo/pseuds/wilkwo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A heartfelt story that answers the big questions: How did R die? What happened to his family? And how'd he survive being shot?! Takes place just after the dive into the pool in the movie. Mostly mild language and a little foreplay. I hope you enjoy it!</p><p>'His double's face was flickering, changing from life, to death, to life as the waves washed over him, and R felt himself flickering, hovering in some strange state of being both, and not. "This is important. What we're about to do. Are you... ready?" he asked himself.'</p><p>(Originally posted on fanfiction.net.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Kiss

_Hello! Some quick notes before I begin. This fic starts just after R and Julie hit the pool after jumping from the boneys. If you haven't seen the movie, this fanfic will make very little sense. Watch the movie ;) In this wee universe, zombies don't heal. I know that's suggested in the movie (with keloid scars n' stuff), but it didn't make much sense to me. Also, I thought everyone was just a little cavalier about R getting shot, so this is partly in answer to that! The fanfic is complete, I just have to post it and will do so in bunches. Hope you enjoy. Please comment if you can, I appreciate the feedback._

_Warm Bodies belongs to Isaac Marion, with a little side interpretation by Jonathan Levine. I of course, own nada (well, cept my avatar pic I guess)_

_P.S. I haven't read New Hunger yet, so this has nothing to do with it. Looking forward to reading it now though :D_

_P.S.S This story was originally posted on fanfiction.net, and it was recommended I post it here. Looks like a cool site, hope it reads well!  
_

* * *

As he sank through the cool water of the pool, R felt something he'd never experienced before.

Peace.

He was dimly aware of his head hitting something hard, shortly after breaking the surface. But now, he was weightless, suspended, adrift. Enveloped in a soundless void where there was no threat, no need to run anymore. Everything was okay. His body was tingling with something it had been building to for a while, something remarkable that the world had never before seen, and it felt... wonderful. The embers of life stirring in a body so long dead.

Arms enveloped him gently. An insistent tugging disturbed his peace, but he ignored it, wanting to hold onto the feeling just a little longer. As he was lifted, and his head broke the surface of the water, sound exploded around him.

"R!"

_Julie._

"R! R.. please!" Her voice was frantic, and he didn't understand, not when everything felt so good.  _Why is she so worried?_

"Please!"

R's eyes snapped open and he gasped, suddenly, desperately needing to breathe. His body felt like it was thundering inside, while the world pushed at him from the outside - raw sensation flooding his mind like the fireworks from Perry's memories. The water was cold, running in icy rivulets down his face, against his burning skin. Julie was so close, her hands holding his head, his neck, brushing his face, her touch made his skin spark, and he stared at her in wonder.

"You okay?" she asked, her blue eyes drawn with worry, water droplets clinging to her lips.

Her eyes had him transfixed. Unable to look away, he was drawn into those blue spheres, to the soul underneath. With an involuntary sigh, her lips moved again, and his heart shuddered quickly in his chest, warmth spreading from it in waves, enveloping him.

Love.

They drifted closer and he could feel himself moving effortlessly, with none of the ungainliness that came from being a corpse, to hold her in a tender kiss. Their lips touched again and again, each caress sending cascading sheets of fire through his body. His nervous system sang with light.

They parted, her eyes met his and she smiled in wonder. "Whoa..."

R stared at her with no words, just an overwhelming need to bathe in that fire again, to be so close to her they shared the same breath. He drew into her and kissed her soft lips, and his body thrummed, every cell sparking into glorious life. The erratic trembling of his heart became a drumbeat, strong and unwavering, and life pulsed outward, reaching the very tips of his fingers as he cradled her close.

Finally, they pulled away. She stared up at him and he stared back, in awe of what they had shared, in awe of her. Julie's expression slowly changed to wonder as she looked into his eyes and R felt a tingling there he didn't understand. He smiled at her, wondering what she saw.

Everything was perfect.

An explosion shattered the moment, and his body was flung backwards, twisting from the impact of something he didn't understand at first. It dawned on him quickly that he'd been shot, and that was something familiar, something his body knew. Then his brain lit up with an overwhelming new fire and he gasped, his legs buckling in the water.

Pain. A feeling his body had never experienced, not since he could remember. It was like screaming, and he didn't know how to cope. Words stopped on the way out of his mouth, and he stared down at himself, perplexed and shattered.

"Dad!" Julie's voice was scared, shocked, and he looked up, trying to understand what had happened.

Beyond her stood soldiers, neatly arrayed around the pool they'd fallen into, and before them Julie's father, his face a scowl. They all had guns, and they were all pointed at him.

The Colonel spoke, his voice cold, "Next one's the head. Move away from him Julie."

His heart plummeted. Why did this have to happen now? They could have gotten away, they could have been together and found a way to live. Why did he have to die now? Pain pulsed in R's chest and he stuttered, bringing his hand to the wound, lost in the vivid agony.

Julie was pleading with her dad. R could hear her voice, but wasn't listening to the words, just felt her meaning and understood she was pleading for him, for them all. She turned back to him then, but he wasn't looking at her. He was staring at his hand.

At his fingers. Red.

"He's... he's bleeding?" Julie's words broke through the pain and he looked up at her, desperate for something he could understand.

It was blood. No trickle of black ooze, but a flood of bright red.  _His_  blood. The water around them was stained with it. The realization was astonishing, and terrifying.

"He's bleeding Dad!" she cried, "Corpses don't bleed!"

Julie turned back and stared at him in awe, joy lighting her eyes. "You're alive?"

It was hard to get a breath to answer her, but he nodded, frightened and astounded. What happens now? How could he stop this? It hurt!

Julie swung back to face her father, "He's alive!"

R followed her gaze, to stare at the soldiers, at her father ready to gun him down. Something passed through the group, a ripple of shock at the reality of what they were seeing. But would they truly believe it? Was he safe?

Julie returned to him, reaching for him, laughter bubbling from her with sheer joy, "You're alive!"

He tried to smile, words failing at his mouth again, caught up in her joy but thoroughly overwhelmed by everything he was feeling. Never had he experienced anything like this, this constant wave of sensation, the frantic thudding of his heart, the desperate need for breath, this electric scream from his shoulder where he'd been shot.

Julie's brows knitted in concern and disbelief as she glanced at the wound and back to his eyes. "Does it hurt?"

"Y-yeah..." R mumbled, stunned by what that meant. He looked up at her father, wanting so much for him to see, to understand.

A beat, a pause, as the world around them seemed to hold its breath.

"This is Colonel Grigio. The situation has changed," came the Colonel's voice, carried to R as clear as his own new heartbeat.

Something in the air shifted at that moment, like a long-held sigh released in a rush. Someone had chosen to believe. To hope.

Guns lowered around them, and a soldier R recognized from the night before stepped forward to help him out of the water. The man was hesitant at first, unsure, and R couldn't blame him, he felt the same way. It was strange having someone who'd been moments from killing him extend a hand in aid. Accepting it, he winced as the man pulled him from the water, then glanced over at Julie.

The Colonel had gathered her in a hug, and there was something so deeply loving and vulnerable about it, something that made her father so different from the grim soldier of a man who'd shot him moments before, that he watched in awe.

They broke apart and the Colonel glanced at R briefly, his eyes bewildered, before gesturing to the vehicles parked nearby, "Let's get you two the hell out of here."

Then Julie was there, holding him, supporting him as they walked to the car. He held onto her tightly, not only to be close to her, but because he was starting to feel like he would fall. Moving his head too much caused the world to lurch, another thing he'd never felt before, and it disturbed him. His world had always been so solid. Too solid. Rigid and unyielding. Outside of the pain pulsing in his chest, he was troubled by this incredible change, the absolute chaos he felt inside, and how much the world could affect him now. It was all new.

They reached the car, and she helped him into the back seat. Her father took the wheel and she moved to sit beside him. Her face was brighter than he ever remembered seeing, and when he saw her grasp her dad's hand he thought knew why. The connection and love he'd seen as they hugged. Something really important had happened between them, something good.

"Are you still bleeding?" the Colonel asked, glancing back.

He leaned forward, stuttering as the pain flared sharply, "Y-yes..."

"Good," the Colonel answered, and R's heart sank. Wincing, he fell back against the seat, and stared down at his hand. It was soaked now as he held it to his wound, the blood seeping through his fingers and over the back of his palm. He didn't understand. Was this normal? How much of this did he have inside? It wasn't like he had a guide for this stuff, he could only relate it to the people he'd killed, as much as he hated thinking about that. They'd stopped bleeding eventually. Why hadn't he?

"Sorry," her father apologized, nodding back to him, as he caught Julie's disapproving look.

Dimly, R realized that the Colonel had been joking. At least that meant he wasn't going to get shot again. Probably. He looked over at Julie, who smiled back at him with so much hope. He tried to smile, to reflect that hope back to her, but he was scared. There was too much happening inside of him and he didn't know what to do with it all. Never had he felt so much movement, so many subtle pulses and shifts. The constant need to breathe was bizarre, and probably harder than it should have been. Very hard, really. He was worried, and felt absolutely powerless.

Was he overreacting? They didn't seem too concerned, so perhaps he was. Trying to relax, he let his head fall back onto the seat. Weirdly he just seemed to keep falling, and he wondered if he was going to dream again. It'd been such an amazing experience before that he just let go, trusting the feeling, and fell into darkness.


	2. Too Good To Be True

Julie felt like she was going to burst. As if she was holding back the loudest, longest laugh she'd ever had. Everything was going to be okay. Dad was her dad again, not the doom and gloom colonel who never knew how to switch off, never admitting that anything could get better. He'd changed, almost as much as R had, in a way. Okay, that was silly, no-one had changed as much as R had, how could you compare a change of heart to the dead coming back to life? But what had happened today was huge. Since her mom had died, hope had become an indulgent, naive, even dangerous emotion to her father. A 'fool's crutch' he called it, likely to get idiots who leaned on it killed. He never entertained it, and never let her forget it.

And today, he'd embraced it. Her father reached for her hand and she took his own, amazed and grateful for the love and hope she could feel from him in that touch. He believed things could change, and that was the single greatest step of faith anyone could take. She really had her dad back.

Then he turned and teased R about the bleeding, and well, that was dad being dad too. She chided him with a look and glanced back at R, this incredible man she... loved. The realization shook her, and she felt a little thrill of joy bubble up inside.

 _I love him._  He'd clawed his way out of death to be with her. The idea, the reality of that made her elated and scared at the same time. Was she worth it? What happened now? What was he feeling?

God, he looked terrible. It was shocking to see blood on him, where there had always been grey. He was so... vulnerable, open to the world. She wished she was in the backseat with him, holding him. Keeping him safe this time. She'd just wanted to share this moment with her dad though - it was something she'd almost given up hope on.

"Dad, how long till we get to the hospital?" she asked, glancing back to R again. He'd settled back in the seat and was looking at her through half-lidded eyes. Her heart lurched.  _Quickly,_  a little voice said inside her,  _hurry!_

"Almost there," her dad answered, sounding calm, but she felt the sudden acceleration. Dread threaded through her stomach and she stared at R.

Why had they been so disconnected from what was happening to him? It was as if they still thought of him as a corpse, unaffected by anything. She'd seen him pull a knife out of his chest, and seen another bullet hole through his clothes, and they meant nothing to him, he just kept going. Now he sat there, blood soaked hand pressed against his chest, looking fragile as hell, his grey shirt swamped with red.

The reality of what she was seeing finally sunk in, and she blinked, suddenly horrified. If this had been any other person, any other living person, she would be screaming for someone to do something, to stop the bleeding, to help.

R's head rolled forward and his hand slowly fell from his chest to his lap.

"R!" she screamed, climbing over the seat to get to him. She reached for his face and gasped. He was so cold, colder than he had been for a while. He didn't respond, and fell against her shoulder. A steady trickle of blood seeped from the wound on his chest and as she frantically covered it with her own hand, screaming at her dad to hurry, she saw a growing spread of blood around another hole on his shirt. The same one she'd marveled over when she'd washed his clothes the night before in their attempt to make him look less like a corpse.

The hole she remembered making.

The knife wound.

 _Oh my god._  She frantically pulled at the hole, trying to find the wound underneath. And found it. A slit about an inch high, the edges strangely puckered, but pulsing with new blood.

_Oh no... oh nononono..._

She was a good shot with a knife. The blade had landed squarely over his heart. Dimly, she remembered what she'd thought at the time -  _Why didn't I go for the head?_  and tears fell from her eyes as she babbled, holding up his face, shaking him, calling to him. Trying to get him to wake up, wake up now!

_I didn't kill you, you aren't dead! You're alive, you're alive, god... please..._

Julie didn't notice they'd stopped until light poured over R's pale face, gentle arms engulfed her and she was pulled away, out of the car. People were speaking to her, but she wasn't hearing words, just sounds, rapid cadences meant to be soothing but she wasn't having any of that. She kicked and screamed as they took her from R, watching through eyes blurred with tears as they lifted him onto a stretcher and carried him away. He didn't move, didn't stir, and she cried out, realizing she'd been the one to kill him in the end, the one who'd snatched away the incredible gift they'd all been given.

As he disappeared from view, all the fight left her and she collapsed. Only the strong arms embracing her kept her from falling. They held her tightly, and the cadences slowly formed into words. The voice of her father, gentle and warm.

"Easy, easy, Jules. They'll do everything they can for him honey. It'll be okay..."

She turned and burrowed into the stiff fabric of his army jacket, sobbing, until the weariness of the last few days finally rushed over her and she fell into exhausted sleep.


	3. Seeing Double

R was dreaming. At least, he was pretty sure this was a dream. Wasn't like the last one though, as he'd hoped it would be. No sunshine, no orchard, no living munching happily at apples as they talked about the future. No Julie.

It was grey, dusk, he was outside, at the foot of the metal stairs he knew so well, leading up to the crew entrance of his 747. The metal railing was cold and rough with rust under his hand, and he stood there for a moment, curious.

What if everything else had been a dream, and this was reality? The thought was unsettling, and he tried not to dwell on it, determined not to after everything he'd been through.

But each step he took was with the same awkward lurch he'd always had, back when he'd been truly dead, and the unsettling thought gained some ground. His stomach sank.

So he  _was_  dreaming. His stomach had never done much of anything when he was a zombie, certainly no sinking. That was good. Relaxed now, he completed his corpse-slow ascent and opened the door, taking staggered steps around it to enter the plane.

He stopped.

This wasn't his plane. Gone were the seats, all of his records, all of his possessions. He was standing in a featureless room with three bunk beds lined up against windowless walls. There was a door to his left and a row of lockers against the right wall.

Sitting in one of the lower beds, staring back at him, was... himself.

R was dumbfounded.

It was himself completely and utterly alive. No shadowed, sunken eye sockets, no grey, veined skin. His unmarred face looked up at him, flush with health, appraising him with thoughtful azure eyes.

"God, I look like shit," his double said after a moment, tilting his head to the side. He pushed himself up off the bed and walked towards R.

R had no idea what was happening, and backed away involuntarily, overwhelmed by the approach of this vibrant living version of himself. It reminded him of when he'd looked in the mirror, after the girls were done with him and he'd stared at himself, amazed. Only, this reflection didn't look like a caricature of life, and moved eerily without his command. In front of this perfect version, he suddenly felt thin, hollow, more like a transparent shadow than anything that had a right to walk the earth. It was a horrible feeling.

His double frowned, and reached out to him, a consolatory gesture that made R shrink back further.

"Hey, it's okay," he said. "Sorry, that wasn't very cool of me, I just couldn't help it." He smirked and walked back to lean against the bunk. "I know this is weird for you. Weird for me too."

R's curiosity slowly overcame his fear, and he spoke in the hesitant, airless tones of the dead, "Why... is this..."

"Happening?" His other self finished. R was actually grateful, it was frustrating to speak like that again, after coming so far. He nodded.

"We're coming back to life," his double said with a smile. R was surprised that he'd said 'we', and found he liked that. Made him feel less.. hollow.

His alive self continued, "and I don't mean our body. That's already happened, though it's in rough shape right now."

R remembered being shot, and looked down at his chest, hand reaching instinctively to cover the wound again. No need, it wasn't there. Just the black slit where Julie's knife had hit him, and the old wound from Perry's rifle. He stared at his grey hand for a moment, then started when he realized his other self was standing directly in front of him.

He was looking down at R's chest with an odd smile. "Her aim is impressive. Doubt I could have done that. Probably would have stabbed myself in the foot."

That living, unmarred face became serious, "Hope we survive it. I'd hate to come this far and lose everything. Especially her."

R realized he was feeling what his double was saying, could almost feel himself forming the same words, moving the same way. It was so strange that he backed away again, but his twin reached out, quicker than R could track and clamped down on his arm. The touch was electric, and with it came waves of vivid, raw emotion - anger, fear, love, an overwhelming grief - R staggered under the assault.

His double's face was flickering, changing from life, to death, to life as the waves washed over him, and R felt himself flickering, hovering in some strange state of being both, and not. "This is important. What we're about to do. Are you... ready?" he asked himself.

"No," they both answered honestly, and the room and all thought evaporated in a blinding light.


	4. Don't Give Up

Julie woke slowly, blinking through eyes gummy with drying tears, and stared up at the ceiling. Her body felt leaden, and for a moment, she just laid there, aware she was back in bed, at home, but thinking and feeling nothing. Peaceful.

It reminded her a little of falling with R, wrapped up so completely in him that she felt no fear, even as they dropped like stones from that platform. She'd been right where she'd needed to be, safe.

The memory made her curl in on herself and she groaned, the shock of what happened afterwards running over and over in her mind - looking into his bluer than blue eyes, the deafening crack of the gunshot, R falling back, the blood... so much damn blood.  _We were swimming in it, how did we not understand?_

Because it was a miracle, it was proof that he had changed, it was a sign that the world could CHANGE. And things were going to get better.

It was, as bizarre as it seemed now, something to feel joyful about, and she wasn't going to beat herself up about it anymore. It served no purpose and didn't help anything, just paralyzed her with guilt. The knife thing was something else, and she couldn't deal with that right now. She had to find R, had to be with him, had to know if he was... dead.

Would he turn back into a zombie? Or would he just be... gone? The yawning hole of grief welled up in her chest again and she fought to choke it down, then quickly twisted off the bed to stand, desperate to move, to do something, to get to him. Her feet were bare, where were her boots? She spied them in the corner next to her desk and scrambled to put them on while hopping towards the door.

"Julie?" It was Nora's voice, and she turned back.

Nora had been sprawled next to her on the bed and she'd never even noticed. Her best friend sat up, rubbing her eyes as she turned to get out of the bed.

"Nora!" Julie cried, and ran to give her a hug, squeezing her hard. "You okay? God, we just left you there with Dad, we shouldn't have done that, I'm so sorry, I..." she was starting to babble again, close to tears. Was this shock?

"Hey, hey, no, it's okay Jules. Geez, what else were we going to do? Your dad was going to shoot R-"

"He DID shoot R!" Julie interrupted, anger flaring up at her dad. If he'd just, for one moment, not been a pig-headed idiot, everything would be fine now...

"Okay, yeah, he did, but not in the head, right?" Nora's attempt at humor just made it worse.

"He's going to die Nora! It's my fault, I did it, I stabbed him and he's dying... I don't..." Crap. Another waterfall. She leaned against her friend and cried, hating it, but needing so badly to let go. She'd had weeks of seeing Perry just fade away, saw her friends slaughtered around her, was dragged through a corpse hive, attacked over and over, and now the man she'd fallen in love with was losing the one thing that had changed everything - his life. Everything she'd pent up and stuffed away was desperately seeking an out.

"You stabbed him? What?!"

Julie tried to collect herself, wiping her face roughly, "Back at the lab, the attack - I thought he was going to... I had a knife, threw it at him."

Nora blinked, "And?" She obviously didn't get it. It'd been a week ago after all.

"Nora, his heart has started to pump blood again. Zombies don't heal, they just are. Wounds we give them just sit there, they don't close. Do you see what I'm talking about now?" This was exasperating, she didn't have time for it. She headed towards the door.

Nora followed, reaching out to brush her arm. "Oh my god. Where did you hit him?"

Where did she  _hit him_? Julie turned to glare back at Nora, hurt. "Where do you think I hit him? I mean, really, I should have aimed for his head, but where's the next best place, Nora?! Where would I throw a knife at a guy who was attacking me? You know how good a shot I am - WHERE DO YOU FREAKING THINK!?"

Julie turned away, distraught, yelling at Nora but really yelling at herself, and was suddenly tackled by her friend in a huge hug. She tried to pull away at first, hurt and embarrassed, but gave in and hugged her back, new tears falling.

Nora rubbed her shoulder, and her voice was a whisper. "I'm sorry, Jules, I'm so sorry, I know how much he means to you, I wasn't thinking."

Julie buried her head in her friends shoulder and nodded, "I know... I'm sorry too - never should have yelled at you like that. I just... I can't handle it."

Nora nodded back, "I know."

After a little while Julie pulled away and smiled weakly at her friend, "Thanks. I needed that."

Nora returned her smile and nodded softly, "I know."

Julie let out a big sigh, letting it go for now, and cocked an eyebrow at her friend. "What happened between you and my dad anyway?"

"Tell you on the way," Nora answered, her smile changing to a mischievous grin.

Julie couldn't help but laugh at that, despite her mood. It felt good. She smiled at her best friend and followed her out the door.

It didn't take long to reach the hospital. Calling it a hospital was generous too, it was really a small medical center, once meant solely for outpatient work, now crammed with cots and a couple of jury rigged ICU beds. There wasn't enough space for everyone, so they used the tent shelters outside for basic triage. Julie had only ever been to those, having had a couple of minor accidents with her knives, mostly to herself, and a dislocated shoulder after falling while exploring the stadium. She didn't enjoy being here, hating to just sit around while people poked and prodded and stitched.

They checked the tents, but there was no sign of R. A soldier lay in one of the cots, his arm propped behind his bandaged head as he watched them pass. Julie waved briefly with a half smile and they moved on to the hospital.

Two armed guards flanked the doorway. Not something Julie was used to seeing and she glanced back at her friend. Nora just shrugged. For a moment she thought she'd have to fight her way in, but they recognized her and let her through. Obviously her dad didn't think it was worth the trouble.

Her heart felt squeezed, her chest tight. The dread in her gut was building as they entered the lobby and the smell of disinfectants washed over them. Two more guards stood by the door to the center interior. This time however they would not let the girls through.

"Sorry Ms. Grigio, Colonel's orders," said the younger one, his hand outstretched to intercept Nora as she tried to push through anyway.

"Oh come on!" her friend barked, wrestling out of his grip. "We need to get in there!"

"Please tell my father than I'm here. I need to see R." Julie tried very hard to sound strong, but threatening tears broke her voice. "Please."

The younger soldier looked at her for a moment, then gave the other guard a nod and disappeared through the door. It swung open and closed a few times, giving Julie snatches of the hallway. Lots of cots, lots of soldiers, a bearded man in a white coat gesturing excitedly at the end.

Nora gave her a quick squeeze and they waited for the guard's return. The other guard just stared ahead. Julie looked at his nametag.

"Um... Bennett?" she asked. The guard looked down at her and she continued, "What's with all the guards? The soldiers?"

Bennett didn't answer immediately, then shrugged, "Had some fighting last night, some guys got hurt. We're here to keep people out."

Julie realized she had no idea what had happened to M and R's friends - hadn't thought about them once. Guilt coiled with the dread in her gut. Had they all been mowed down? She had to know.

"What happened?" she asked, dreading the answer.

He shrugged again, "Wasn't there. Heard some of them talking though - weird stuff. Doesn't make any sense."

"What?"

"Something about corpses helping them fight the skeletons. Weird shit."

Julie's face broke into a wide smile. Oh my god, things really were changing! And people weren't fighting it! She squeezed Nora back, who just looked at her, confused.

Bennett leaned towards them a little, as if he was talking more than he should. "Heard also, they got a corpse in this hospital. That's really why we're here."

Julie's smile fell from her face. She blinked and stepped back from him, horrified and offended by what he'd just said. A corpse? R? And that's why they had guards? Why were they treating him like he was going to rise up and attack everyone, like he was still some mindless freaking zombie? Her dad hadn't changed, what was she thinking? How dare this asshole use that word!

"Uh oh," said Nora.

"He's NOT A GODDAM-"

She was interrupted by her dad pushing his way abruptly through the door. He promptly tapped the guard on the arm and pointed at the entrance, "Take a five minute break."

The guard, who'd had a stunned expression on his face from Julie's near explosion, frowned at the Colonel then walked off.

The Colonel waited until he was gone, then grasped Julie's shoulders, concern clear in his voice as he spoke, "I'm sorry I wasn't there when you woke up Jules, I had to be here. Are you okay?"

Julie pushed away from him sharply, her anger at her father making it hard to think, "How dare you! How dare you treat him like this!"

Her dad blinked, "Like what?"

"The armed guards!" Julie shouted, throwing her arm out to emphasize the point, "What were you planning? Shoot him if he groans?"

"I had to take precautions Jules," her father replied, his tone lowering to warning levels, "I am the leader here. People have to feel safe. We don't have a precedent for what's happening right now, we don't know what will happen if he..."

"If he what?" Julie spat.

"If he dies," her father answered gently.

The word cleanly severed her anger, and her face crumpled. "No Dad... he can't..."

He held her again, and nodded, "I know Jules. I know."

"Can I see him? Please?"

"He's in surgery sweetheart - we need to stay out of their way." He looked at her then, his eyes soft, "They're fighting for him Jules, with everything they have. They know how important this is."

Julie choked down a sob and nodded into his jacket, squeezing him back tightly, then stared at the door leading to the rest of the hospital.

She wanted to see through that door, into the room where R was. She wanted to hold him, let him know she was there.

_I'm here R, don't give up._


	5. Leaving It All Behind

_Any flashback scene from here on in is from R's perspective. I didn't want to give away R's name here, so it's never mentioned ;)_

* * *

"I give up!" he yelled, kicking the corner of the bunk bed. It banged satisfyingly against the wall.

Sighing, his father reached out for him, "Son..."

He flinched away and threw open his locker. "What's the point? What's the goddamn point?!" Yanking a grey shirt from the shelf, he quickly pulled it over his head, then finally glared back at his dad.

Shrugging into his own dark blue workman's jacket, his dad stared back, his brown eyes soft.

"The point is," his dad answered heavily, "we survive."

"As what?" he asked, pleading for a real answer, "Warm bodies? A quota? So some government agency can note down 'x civilians rescued today' and feel good about themselves?"

His father finally fixed him by the shoulders. He looked anywhere but at his dad's face.

"Maybe a little of that. But-" his dad said, and as he rolled his eyes and tried to pull away, his father held him firm, "no, listen.  _Listen to me._  You and I, your brother, everyone else they ship out of here today? We're the future. That's what it's all about. We are the future."

He finally looked his dad in the eye and snorted. "Seriously? We are the future? That's what you got?"

Warning bells went off in his head as he saw his father's face harden into a scowl.  _Whoops._  He tried to recoup, "What kind of future dad? Is it a future where we live, or just exist?"

His dad threw his hands up in the air and walked over to his own locker, shaking his head. "It doesn't matter son. You can't bring any of your stuff, they can't afford the space, that's just the way it is. Even your goddamn ipod. Deal with it."

With a scowl to match his dad's, he pulled his favorite hoodie out of his locker, and stared down at the meager possessions he'd managed to save from home. His ipod, always by his side - he was nothing without music around him - lay amidst his favorite books, a bunch of random junk that meant the world to him, and a single vinyl record he'd snatched out of the collection he'd been building at home. Ridiculous now with nothing to play it on, but then it'd been important. He brushed his hand against a baseball he'd caught at his first live game (it almost never happened, his dad had said proudly afterwards, giving him a high five), and flipped the cover off the small photo album he'd taken to his first year of college, with a scrawled message inside. He'd never finished that year of course. Hard to pay attention to a lecture when a student everyone thought had been sleeping gets up and starts to eat his friend's face.

Until then, nobody he knew really took this zombie thing seriously. The reports were scattered, ridiculous, and delivered by newscasters trying to keep straight faces. He remembered his roommate actually laughing at the news. This had to be a joke, he'd said. A modern day 'War of the Worlds'.

But it wasn't. There was no punchline. People died waiting for one. Then they were told to evacuate, gathered up, and bussed to shelters set up and guarded on the outskirts of the city. Schools, government buildings, anything big enough to house multiple families and provide some basic necessities would do. He'd left college before they were moved the first time, and managed to pack a few things before the bus arrived.

He was lucky. If he'd still been in the city, he probably never would have seen his family again.

The thought made him pause, and he turned to look at his dad, his features softening. He sighed. It wasn't really about the ipod. About his stuff. Well, it sucked to leave it behind, and he didn't know what he was going to do without music... but, really, it was about memories. It was about hopes and dreams, about what made him who he was. About his life.

And it was about mom. He looked back down at the album, and traced his finger down the side of her image. It was the first photo his dad had stuffed into the album, a photo of all four of them, taken by an uncle at a little family gathering. They were all smiling, even his little brother who he'd just roped in a headlock. His mom had the best smile. Smiling back was easy.

It hadn't been fair. She always seemed so bright and happy. Then she got sick, then she died. It took a while. Too long. When she finally went, she didn't look too much different than some of the dead he'd seen since.

The thought made him angry at himself, and he punched the next locker.

His dad took it the wrong way, and slammed his own locker shut. "For god's sake, grow up! Your brother can't bring anything either - do you see him having a fit?"

"Dad... I didn't..." he mumbled, then gave up. "He's twelve dad. Throw him in a corner with some paper and a crayon and he's happy."

It was a silly thing to say, and he really meant it more as a joke than anything else, but it fell from him bitterly, and when he turned to find his little brother was in the room, he cringed.

"Sorry," he muttered, "I didn't mean it."

"I'm not five years old dickhead," his brother mouthed off at him, dumping his old clothes on his bunk.

The attitude made him grin, "I know bro."

Their dad was less impressed, "I don't want to hear that language out of you Brandon, okay?"

Brandon shrugged and tossed on new clothes, throwing the soggy towel he'd worn from the shower rooms onto his bunk.

His dad opened his mouth as if to say something about it, but sighed instead and went to wait by the door. "Come on guys, we need to get moving."

This was it then, he thought. Time to leave everything he owned, all of these memories behind. These pieces of himself. He stood by his locker, staring at the remains of his life for one more moment as he shrugged on and zipped up his red hoodie. From the open photo album, his mother smiled up at him, as if to say it would all be okay.

"Come on!" his dad yelled, "I don't want to be on the last bus!"

With a flick of his fingers, he quickly slid the photo out of the album, tucked it into the pocket of his hoodie, and headed for the door.

Time to go be that future.


	6. Hooked to the Machine

Julie woke with a start, jerking back against Nora, who'd fallen asleep with her on the uncomfortable lobby couch. The fluorescent light above them gave a brief flicker, and she noticed that night had fallen outside. Rubbing her scratchy eyes, she looked towards the door. It was unguarded.

She slowly rose from the couch, trying not to disturb her friend. A tiny frown creased Nora's forehead, but she didn't wake. Julie left her and walked softly to the door.

Gingerly she pulled it open an inch or two, just enough to scan the hallway ahead. The cots were still there, but many of the soldiers had gone. Only a few remained, and they seemed to be sleeping.

Perfect, she thought. She pushed the door open and closed it gently behind her, then tiptoed down the hall. No-one moved, and she thought briefly back to when she'd sneaked past R on the plane, when he seemed completely oblivious to the world around him in the cockpit. He hadn't noticed her at all, and it was so unlike him that she'd been tempted to walk up and see what he was doing. A little voice had warned her not to. That she might not like what she saw.

God, she had to see him. Which room was he in? She remembered the doctor at the end of the hall, and aimed for it, peeking in a couple of windowed doors along the way. She saw a room where a bunch of people lay in cots, some still in scrubs. Doctors, nurses, who'd obvious worked themselves to exhaustion.

Finally she reached the last door on the left. There was no window, so she had no way to judge if it was the right door, but it felt like she should go through, so she did. The door opened to a much bigger room, with a couple of beds wired up with, it seemed, every device they could find. The improvised ICU. The lighting was dimmed, and against the far wall monitors blinked and beeped around the figure in the only occupied bed.

 _Oh god._  Julie gave an involuntary cry, raising her hands to her mouth as she approached him. R lay on the bed, surrounded by machinery. Lost in a network of wires and tubes running from the machines, under the thin sheet that covered his pale body, under the yellowed bandages taped to his chest, to sensors taped everywhere there was space. Bags of fluids hung suspended at the side of the bed, feeding blood and saline to his body through tubes going through an ugly shunt in his neck, and down to a needle in his arm.

The worst was the ventilator. Big plastic tubes led from the machine to a thin mouthpiece, strapped and taped into his mouth. The tubes jerked, and she watched as his chest rose, then fell, over and over.

A tear spilled down her face as she took it all in at his side, feeling helpless. She wanted to gather him up, hold him, stir him back to life, but couldn't, for fear of disturbing some vital connection to the machines. He looked trapped, ensnared by some hungry creature of twisted tubes and wire tendrils. It was horrific, and somehow he looked worse now to Julie than he had as an animated corpse. His skin wasn't as grey, his eyes weren't as sunken and bruised, but he didn't feel... here.

"R..." she finally whispered, reaching over to stroke the hair from his forehead, accidentally brushing a sensor fixed there. Her left hand sought his own, and she enfolded it, lacing her fingers through his. They were cool against her skin.

Julie scanned his slack features for any flicker of consciousness, but he remained absolutely still, only his chest rose and fell shallowly with each jerk of the ventilator. It was strange to be this close to him, and not have him react to her, to watch her without blinking in that intensely focused way. She gently traced his eyebrow with her thumb, then brushed down along his cheek, marveling at the feel of his skin.

"We have to keep him under," said a man behind her, and she jumped, startled.

The voice came from behind a desk sitting in shadow against the opposite wall. Slowly, she realized it was the bearded doctor from the hall, the one who had seemed so excited when she'd seen him in the hallway. He stood from his seat and walked over to stand at the foot of the bed. His hands, thickly knuckled, gripped the top bar firmly.

He smiled lightly at her, with weary brown eyes creased in laugh lines, then looked down at R.

Julie continued to stare at him, trying to work out if she'd ever met him before or seen him around their little city. His hair was brown and grey and thick and he wore a blue polo under the white coat. There was a small scar running down his right jaw line, healed long ago it looked like. She didn't remember him.

He spoke softly, obviously tired, his voice thready with air, "We have him attached to an ECMO. Need to keep him under while he's on it."

ECMO? She scanned all of the machines, trying to figure out which one it was.

He caught her unasked question, "It helps to pump blood, clean it, oxygenate it. His cardiac muscle was damaged, so it needs time to rest and heal."

Julie's face fell and she stared down at R's chest, the black hole yawning in her gut again. The cardiac muscle... the heart. Her fault.

The doctor was oblivious, "It's the only one we have actually, and we're damn lucky we had one. I don't think he would have made it otherwise."

She nodded, tears threatening, her eyes downcast. She squeezed R's hand tightly.

"It was the best, and very last medical salvage I ever led," he smirked, and absentmindedly stroked the scar on his jaw, then finally seemed to recognize the effect he was having. "Geez, I'm sorry. Rambling here, and it's not helping." He extended his hand, "I'm Stephen. You're Julie right?"

Nodding, she took his hand and gave it a small shake, then held him for a moment, realizing this man was the reason R was still alive.

"Thank you," she said earnestly, then let his hand go.

"You're welcome. I didn't do the surgery though, that was Dan. He was a cardiologist at Temple before this all went down, came to this city to see his family and got stuck here. Damn lucky that happened too." Stephen shook his head and laughed, "Sorry, I'm still rambling. I'm just... we're all... kinda excited." At the last word he tilted his head towards R's prone form.

Julie turned to look at R and nodded slowly. "Yeah," she said, her voice quiet. She was thrilled that the impossible seemed to be happening, but right now, all she wanted was R to come back, so she could look into those new blue eyes of his and see him smile again.

"Is he going to be okay?" she asked, much more calmly than she felt.

_Please say yes, please say yes. Everything was so peaceful right now, it had to be okay._

"We did everything we could. The bullet wounds were fairly easy, but the penetration trauma was not. Couldn't risk cracking him open, we just don't have the blood reserves for that, so Dan had to do some fancy work with the ECMO, calm his heart down a bit, and work with a scope and a long clamp. Genius."

He paused, and looked a little sheepish, "You were looking for a yes or no weren't you."

"Kinda, yeah."

"Can't really give one, I'm sorry. He's not out of the woods yet. The machine's taking the load off his lungs and heart, but we have to give him some time, then try to see if he's healed enough to take it back on himself. There's always a risk with any kind of bypass though, that's the problem. Particularly in this setup."

Julie nodded, brushing away a tear with her thumb.

Stephen watched her, but didn't say anything. She appreciated that. She really didn't want to try to explain why she was so affected by the fate of one zombie turned living. There was too much she didn't understand anyway, and trying to say what she thought truly caused this change out loud sounded terribly... corny.

And wonderful.

She smiled, despite R's still form, despite the guilt and dread. Slowly she leaned over R and kissed his forehead, lingering for a moment to rest her head against his. It felt good.

"I'm here R," she whispered, and squeezed his hand.

His fingers stayed limp in her own.

She sighed, suddenly very tired, and stood up. The motion made her head swim, and she raised her free hand to her face. "Whoa..."

"Hey, you okay?" Stephen asked.

"Yeah, just got a little... whoa..." Shaking her head at his concern, the room suddenly lurched alarmingly. Everything in view pitched violently forward - R, the monster machines ensnaring him, the dim fluorescent lights above - then she was free falling in slow motion, idly wondering if her head would crack open when she hit the floor.


	7. The Last Bus

So they ended up on the last bus. What a surprise. Of course, his dad was not happy. But it wasn't his fault, for once. Brandon had decided to change his jacket at the last minute and ran back into the shelter before their father could stop him.

When their bus finally pulled up, he waited in line with everyone else to get on. Doing a quick headcount, he realized that they probably wouldn't fill the whole bus. Which meant they were the dregs of the group. How appropriate.

It would have all felt so normal if it wasn't for the soldiers watching them, armed to the teeth, talking back and forth through the coms on their vests. He could almost imagine he was back in high school, years ago, about to go out on a field trip to some stuffy museum, excited to be getting away. The sky was a vivid blue, it was sunny but not too cool. A perfect fall day. He closed his eyes and tried to replace the anxious silence around him with the memory of his friends' laughter, the exasperated yelling of a teacher. It almost worked.

A gunshot shattered the moment, and he felt Brandon jump in front of him. He opened his eyes, resting a hand gently on his little brother's shoulder, and turned with everyone else to see who'd fired the shot. Voices were starting to rise in volume around them, some a little more frantic than most, stirring the energy of the rest of the group. Beyond the end of their bus, and the improvised wall built around the school, two soldiers stood on a platform made out of scaffolding. One was just lowering his rifle while another pointed further down the road.

"Let's move it folks!" yelled one of the soldiers nearby, "Everything's fine, just keep moving."

There were two more shots from behind them, one quickly after the other, and a few wide eyed faces turned to look past him as those in front turned to see what was happening. Someone shoved him from behind and he almost fell over.

"Watch it!" he snapped over his shoulder, into the terrified face of an elderly man who must have been in his eighties. He immediately felt like a prick and mumbled an apology, but the man wasn't hearing him and kept stumbling by, so he pulled Brandon to the side to let the man pass.

"Sorry about that," a lady with wild red hair apologized as she nudged past to support the man, "Dad can't handle gunfire."

He smiled and nodded, "That's okay. I don't like it much either."

She returned his smile, and he was caught for a moment by her eyes. Bright green, keenly hopeful, but puffy, as if she'd been crying for a long while. She turned away and helped her father into the bus.

They finally stepped on and he saw he was right, the bus was maybe half full at most. His dad and brother found a seat together towards the front, but he moved further down, sitting opposite the lady and her father. The elderly man was hunched over, head resting on the seat in front, his knobby fingers twisting the cheap vinyl covering. His daughter whispered to him in comforting tones and rubbed him gently on the back.

Feeling intrusive, he turned away from them both towards the window. The barricade rose the height of the bus and wasn't much to look at, but a flash of color and movement through a gap caught his eye. He focused on it and swallowed hard.

Lurching, grey corpses, black mouths gaping, were pressing up against the barricade. He could see maybe ten, no... twelve out there, but in the distance more were coming.

_Jesus._

There was another crack of gunfire, and the head of one of the zombies disappeared in a spray of gore.

Jerking back from the window in shock, he glanced around the bus, looking to connect with someone who'd seen the same thing. Nobody was looking, nobody had. He stared back out, and more dead were now filling the spot where the other had fallen.

 _How could there be so many? Why weren't the soldiers just mowing them down?_  He'd never seen so many gathered before, and it was really, really creepy. Unsettling.  _Were they going to move soon? How long was it to the airport?_ He shifted uncomfortably in his seat, and started flicking the rubber bands on his wrist, nervous energy threading through his gut.

Heavy footfalls caught his attention and a tall, burly soldier cradling a rifle in his arms climbed on board and leaned over to talked to the driver. They nodded to each other, and the soldier clapped the driver on the back, then walked slowly down the center of the bus. The man's gaze took in everyone quickly, then singled out a few people to stare out at length.

As the soldier's eyes fell on him, he found himself shifting uncomfortably in his seat. The look was hard, very serious, made all the more intimidating by the man's heavy brow, and standard issue buzz cut. The gun helped too. There was a guy who clearly wouldn't hesitate to do what was necessary to get a job done. He was sure they'd get along _just_  awesomely.

As the armor clad figure walked by him he found himself looking down the black barrel of the rifle as it passed inches from his face. The image of the zombie's head exploding flickered in his mind, and he turned away, resting his forehead on the seat in front. Wanting to just not see anything for a while. Wanting to imagine again that they were on the field trip. Somewhere normal. Somewhere safe. Reaching into his hoodie for his ipod without thinking, he swore when he remembered he'd had to leave it behind, and pulled out the photo instead.

As the engine rumbled into life and the bus pulled away from the shelter, he kept his head down and stared at the smiling faces in his hand. Machine gun fire exploded in a staccato burst from somewhere nearby, answered by a trembling moan from the old man to his left. He didn't look up. His mom kept smiling, and he could imagine her saying everything was okay. Everything would turn out okay. She used to say that a lot, in the early days of being sick.  _Everything's fine honey, don't worry. Everything will be okay._

Everything was not okay. He shoved the photo back into his pocket and closed his eyes.

_Julie._

Sounds shifted in a strange hiccup of space. The rumble of the bus engine changed to a raspy hiss, punctuated evenly by a metallic click, the low chatter of the other passengers melded into beeps and hums, and his chest... breathing was... wrong, something in his throat-

_Julie. Her hand... falling._

Blinking in confusion and pain, he reacted on instinct, snatching out for her, his hand clasping around her arm. The sudden weight sparked a bright flare of vivid agony in his chest and he tried to scream but couldn't - something was choking him, something horrible was stuck in his throat! Holding Julie, he tried to reach to his mouth with his other hand, but his arm was tangled in something, pulling, tearing...

"Oh shit!" came a man's voice, stark through his muzzy pain, and he tracked a white blur moving to his side. Towards Julie. It scared him and he tried to shield her from whoever it was. The movement brought fresh agony and he groaned.

"R!" It was Julie's voice, "Oh god, R! Stop moving, it's okay! I'm okay!" She sounded terrified, he blinked rapidly, trying to see her clearly, just wanting to see her face. Her hand held his own again, and she raised cool fingers against his forehead. The touch brought a moment of calm.

"Jesus, he shouldn't be able to move, this is not good!" the white blur said again at his side. Frightened, he tried to track what the man was doing, but couldn't, and his body spasmed with coughing as the thing in his throat shifted, his chest felt squeezed, and he couldn't breathe properly. Icy panic flooded through his body and he ripped his other arm free, reaching for whatever was stuck in his throat.

"R, STOP!" Julie yelled, and grabbed his other hand, trying to hold it away from his face. Why was she doing that?! He needed to breathe! He fought back, his body overriding any desire to listen.

"Oh no you don't! Say goodnight kid!" the man shouted, and as soon as he spoke, R felt himself grow immensely heavy. Numbness spread from his neck, down his chest, his legs, his arms, bringing welcome release from the pain, but more panic. He tried desperately to see Julie, to speak to her, but felt himself falling backwards, and the blurry world around him faded quickly to black.


	8. Not a Betrayal

"R? Oh my god, R..." Julie cried softly, stroking his forehead as his eyes closed and his hand relaxed in hers.

Fresh tears welled up as she thought of how scared he'd been, how terrified he'd looked as he'd struggled against the ventilator. She'd felt horrible holding him back from it, but she  _had_  to, Stephen said it was important. The look on his face though, the confusion and his disbelief as she had, broke her heart. It felt as if she'd betrayed him in some way, and that  _hurt_.

And yet again, he'd come to her rescue! Come out of everything they'd thrown into his system, just to bring her back from the brink. And he'd just ended up hurt.  _Again._

Why was he always getting hurt because of her? _It wasn't fair.  
_

"I need you," Stephen said tersely, catching her eye as he pulled a syringe out of the line running to R's neck, "to go over there." He gestured with a tilt of his head to the bed beyond R's.

Julie sighed heavily. "I'm fine." Truthfully though, she didn't feel fine at all, she just didn't want to leave R's side. He  _needed_  her, and she needed to be with him.

"Now," he answered, and his tone left no room for arguing.

Reluctantly, Julie released R's hand, stroking his hair once more, flashing back to the time he'd done that just after he'd taken her 'home'. She'd been horrified then, but now, it just seemed endearing. With great care, determined not to faint again, she turned and walked over to the other bed. The room wobbled a little as she moved, but finally she stretched out on the cool mattress. A heavy exhaustion swamped her almost immediately and she yawned widely despite herself.

Stephen shifted around R, working to replace the line in his arm that he'd ripped out, and reattached some kind of monitor to his finger. He stared over at her for a moment, frowning.

"When's the last time you ate something?" he asked. "Because it might have been good to take care of yourself before coming in here to collapse on my patient."

Julie winced, "I'm sorry. I never meant to do that."

"You don't say?" Stephen answered, clearly irritated. He stepped away from R's bed and strode quickly over to the desk he'd appeared from before. When he returned he was carrying a jug of water and a protein bar.

"Here," he said, offering both to her.

Julie made a face at the bar, but took it and devoured it with a speed that surprised her. Then she realized, with just a little shock, that it had been a whole day since she last ate. She'd had no idea just how hungry she was, hadn't even thought about food. How could she? Everything had just been so... crazy. Following the dry bar with a couple of big draughts of water, she gave a satisfied sigh and dropped her head back on the bed.

"God, thank you," she said and held the jug out to him.

"Keep it, I think you're pretty dehydrated."

She nodded, and yawned as weariness swamped her again. God, she was tired. Blinking slowly, she stared past Stephen at R.

"He going to be okay?" she asked, her voice slurring.

"I hope so."

Julie nodded softly, "Me too." Closing her eyes, she finally let herself relax, and drifted quickly to sleep.

* * *

_Short one, as is the next, so I'll post that one in a moment. But, wanted to say one thing that struck me about Julie as she's portrayed in the movie. Something that I was always impressed by. Julie always said 'thank you' any time R helped her in any way. The two times that come to mind are when he makes her 'safe' under the airplane after she's run from him the first time, and when he knocks the boney off her near the end. I always thought that was wonderful. She's a strong character in her own right, regardless, but it just added something special to who she was as a person. How she was able to treat R as a human, even after only just meeting him._

_If you're enjoying the story so far, hope you'll stick around. It's about to get a bit crazy. And a bit sad. If you have a moment, let me know what you think in a comment, thanks! :D_


	9. Hero of the Moment

Stephen gently pulled the jug away to a nearby table so it wouldn't spill and covered the girl with a thin sheet.

He was mentally kicking himself for letting her come in in the first place, but he'd been curious. He'd heard rumors from the other soldiers who'd been at the stadium, who'd brought Julie and the... young man back. Rumors that they'd been very, very close. It was obvious to see first hand of course. The kid had come out of a heavy dose of propofol to grab her, Stephen had no idea how, but their connection was incredibly strong.

Was that what had brought him back from being a corpse? The Colonel hadn't released any kind of official statement yet, but Stephen felt he was probably waiting to see if the kid pulled through. How the heck do you give an official statement on love as a zombie cure? It was ridiculous.

If he hadn't been told by the Colonel himself, he wouldn't have believed it. And there was still some niggling part of his brain that refused to believe. A little voice that said it's a joke. It's a prank. A dumb prank, 'cause the kid was dying, but still.

He stared at the young man on the bed. He looked... normal. Too pale, but human pale. All the instruments he was attached to said the same thing - human. Alive.

A miracle. They'd been waiting for one for so damn long. When the outbreak had first started, there were dedicated teams working on a cure. Most were government institutions, but many were private groups, university think tanks. There was a strong momentum at first - people had hope. Then they'd been overrun as experiments failed, the dead broke free, destroyed everything. And it became just about survival. No one had time to look for a cure when they were too busy running, hiding, fighting. Failing. Life petered to the tiniest flicker and hope flat out died.

He'd been on one of those teams, been involved in the experiments. They dissected so many of the dead looking for an answer, a cause. He'd had their black gore up to his elbows as he dug and delved. They tried to cut it out, bleed it out. The brain seemed an important clue, so they'd sliced away at them until the dead became truly dead. But it revealed nothing. People started to believe in a curse - when science fails you so completely, what else can you do?

A part of him wanted to see inside the kid. Wanted to release the secrets he carried, and find something concrete, something they could reproduce in a lab and carry around in a syringe. To somehow make up for the failures of the past, become the hero of the moment. Show everyone that science could trump insanity. Make the world make sense again.

Another part of him was thinking about his son. David had been bitten. Stephen had tried to save him. And he'd failed. Had to put him down. His own son. Gently. There were no guns, no blunt trauma, just a very precisely placed cut, and he was gone. He hadn't had a choice then. Now that it seemed that they did, he could no longer make the right one for David. It hurt.

Stephen raised a hand to his face and squeezed a few stubborn tears from his eyes.

Then he noticed a growing bloom of red on the bandage over the center of the boy's chest, and an alarm sounded on the blood pressure monitor.

"Oh crap," Stephen whispered. He rushed to the kid's side and lifted the bandage gently. Underneath, beneath a thin crust of a scab, a slow trickle of blood pulsed. The blood pressure monitor alarmed again, and the young man's pulse rate dropped.

He'd torn the goddamn stitches saving the girl.

"Shit shit shit," he swore under his breath, replacing the bandage, and ran from the room.


	10. Crashing the Apocalypse

Jesus, the world was a mess. They'd only been at the shelter for about three weeks, but it hadn't been anywhere near this bad when they'd gone in. This was the fucking apocalypse, for real. They'd driven through a couple of neighborhoods now where there was maybe one house on the street fully barricaded, where some industrious person had wired up lights or barbed wire, and their yards were covered in corpses. He'd actually seen the shadowy figure of a man sitting in an upstairs window in one house, behind the long barrel of a rifle. It was the only other living person he'd seen so far, and he wasn't even sure if they really counted, because he never saw them move.

Dead cars sat everywhere, abandoned. How they were moving through this mess he had no idea, but figured the government had cleared the path before deciding to evacuate them again.

Where the hell were they going to go though? Was there anywhere left? His dad had said something about a military base in Alaska. Perhaps that made sense? Did that mean they were just giving up here? What about the museums, galleries, libraries? There'd still been an internet the last he'd seen at the school. How long would that last?

He kept trying to wrap his brain around what was really happening. Around the collapse of humanity. Because that's what this was. Humanity going down. He'd always thought it'd be due to some dickhead starting a religious war, with a bunch of overinflated egos jumping in and flattening the earth. Instead it was monsters. Dumb ones that shouldn't be able to do anything in the first place, what with being dead.

And they were everywhere. They'd surrounded the barricade back at the school when they left, and that had been the most he'd seen in one place. As they got closer to the city and the airport though, he'd seen more. Strange lopsided staring people with sunken alien eyes, bad color, black teeth, dressed in robes, business suits, runners and ipods, overalls, dresses, even some that were completely naked. And a kid. That had been the most fascinating, repulsive, disturbing thing he'd ever seen in his life. He'd wanted to turn away as they'd passed, and had heard the sobs and cries of a few other passengers when they'd spotted him too. The boy couldn't have been any more than five or six, wearing a Batman t-shirt, shorts and one shoe. A jagged gash in his arm oozed something dark. The boy had just watched them pass, then stumbled after them for a while, dragging along something furry and mangled, something very dead.

He'd watched the boy, looking out the back window, until the Humvee that was following them stopped alongside the child. The boy reached out and lurched towards the soldier at the top as the man had leveled his rifle.

Quickly turning away before hearing the faint pop, he'd had to fight the sudden urge to throw up. One lady hadn't stopped crying since then.

Now that they were closer to the airport, he recognized the exits as they neared, and felt a small sense of relief, a tiny spark of hope that they were going to be okay. It wouldn't be long before they were up in the air. And as everyone knew, zombies couldn't fly.

They didn't swim either, but all he did was puke on boats, so he was glad they weren't going that route.

The bus driver swore. Immediately, everyone craned their heads to look up front. His dad turned to look back at him first, frowning. He just shrugged back.

They'd taken one of the airport exits, and were heading down the ramp. It was one of the first exits though, and as they continued, the cluster of abandoned cars thickened.

A tendril of unease coiled through his gut. This didn't seem right.

Behind them came a rapid series of honks. It was the backup escort vehicle, waiting at the top of the exit, the soldier on top waving them back.

_A wrong turn? How the hell could the guy take a wrong turn?_

Heavy footfalls came from behind him, and he turned to watch the dark clad soldier with the rifle walk past and up to the driver.

"You seriously take the wrong exit?" The man asked, staring out at the cars.

The driver raised a hand and shook his head, "I'm fixing it, I'm fixing it, just hold on." He jerked at the gears, trying to get the bus in reverse on the slope. It wasn't cooperating.

"Oh god," somebody moaned, and heads swiveled throughout the bus as anxious passengers tried to work out what was wrong.

"People!" the soldier barked, "Keep calm, we'll be back up the ramp in a moment."

"No, no look!" said a man close to where his father was sitting.

They all looked where he was pointing. A big group of corpses were steadily shuffling their way, coming up a road and field across from the exit.

 _Oh shit. C'mon bus driver - move it!_  His dad glanced back at him again, his face dark with concern. This was ridiculous. How the hell did they let this happen?

Everyone's voices rose in volume, and the bus was swallowed in a cacophony of questions, people yelling at the driver, at the soldier. A couple of people had disappeared behind their seats, obviously not wanting to look at the dead heading their way.

Behind them came a burst of gunfire. Everyone looked to see if their military escort had hit the approaching corpses, but none of the dead dropped. Some of them actually started to run at them now, excited by the sound.

He turned to stare back at the Humvee, and his heart trembled. The soldier on top wasn't firing on the group approaching the bus - he'd turned away and was firing back down the highway, back the way they had come. Just beyond the car he could make out the bobbing heads of a bunch of dead moving fast towards the vehicle.

_Holy shit._

"Come on!" he yelled, his voice barely audible above everyone elses screams.

The driver managed to get it into reverse, the gears groaning, and the bus started to move, way too slowly. The dead were running up the ramp now towards them, and more gunfire echoed from above.

"Everybody shut the hell up and stay in your seats!" roared the soldier, above the din. He flicked open the top of a window near the main door and leveled his gun at the fast approaching dead. When he fired, the sound was deafening in the enclosed space - everyone grabbed their ears and ducked their heads. A couple of corpses dropped, and were merely run over by the rest.

The noise was insane, people were screaming, the gunfire was shredding everyone's eardrums. In the midst of the chaos he looked back at the Humvee and his mouth went dry.

The vehicle was being swarmed. Not just from behind, but from the highway in front of them too. The guy on top was waving frantically at them now, not to come back, but to keep going, and the car was speeding down to them. Did the driver see this? He turned to look, and the guy was wrestling again with the gears. They'd stopped again, so apparently he had.

_Holy shit! How the hell were they going to get through this?_

The dead reached the bus, just as the driver got it in gear and slammed on the accelerator. Immediately the bus lurched forward, running over the two closest dead, and clipped the headlights of an abandoned BMW. Another corpse, a middle aged man with a comb over, slapped up against the window and hung there for a moment gnawing pointlessly on the glass before sliding down and under the bus.

They clipped another car and the driver swung wildly to compensate, veering straight into a crowd of dead. Black gore sprayed the windscreen and door as several were crushed, a horrifying sound over the screams of panic all around him as people were thrown out of their seats. The driver veered again to miss another car, but hit the collapsed front end of a old beetle instead, and suddenly they were airborne, going over the edge of the ramp in a spin.

Gravity reversed itself, and for a moment, he found himself floating eerily, one hand desperately clamped on the seat in front, as the world spun wildly around him. He had a second to see his dad engulf his little brother in the midst of flying bodies, and then the ground met the side of the bus with a shower of sparks and glass, and he was wrenched violently sideways.

Something hard smashed into his head, and the world vanished in a blink.


	11. Shaking Death's Hand

For the first time in a very, very long time, John Grigio was unsure of what to do. There'd always been a certain concrete rhythm to his life while protecting possibly the largest gathering of survivors on the east coast. Maintain the wall, salvage for supplies, kill the undead. Continue until doomsday, which he'd been expecting any day now, if he was honest with himself.

Now he stood, in line with about fifty of his men, facing well over two hundred corpses in the stadium. The walking kind of corpses. Surrounded by dead skeletons. The non-walking truly dead kind. That the walking corpses had helped his men kill.

Life had spun into reverse, and he had no idea what was supposed to happen next. Normally, at this point, there would be shooting followed by exploding heads. But the corpses weren't doing anything but standing there. Swaying. Some of them - and he'd had to do a double take just to be sure he wasn't seeing things - seemed to be  _smiling_.

He wondered how much longer they could just stand here facing each other.

"Excuse me... sorry... coming... through..." A faint paper thin voice rose from the mass of dead in front of him, and slowly the group parted. From the gathered corpses came a man, dead of course, wearing a sports jacket, polo shirt and slacks. He was balding, and stared at him with intense wolf-like eyes.

A soldier nearby raised his rifle. John motioned for him to lower it, and waited for the corpse to do whatever it was going to do.

"Hi," the dead guy said, in the same whispery voice. Then he did something completely unexpected, that shook John's world a little harder.

The corpse extended his hand in greeting.

The Colonel stared at the corpse, at the corpse's hand, and back at the corpse.

"Hi," the balding zombie said again, and this time motioned up and down with his hand, as if to instruct someone on how to shake hands.

This was the moment, John realized.

Well, not shooting that kid in the head had really been the moment, but a part of him held back because he didn't want to traumatize his daughter any more. Then the boy had started bleeding, and insanity reigned.

But this, this was huge. Did he truly believe that this was possible? That the world could change? Could he make that leap himself and... change?

_F**k yeah._

John walked forward, and took the corpse firmly by the hand, giving him the bravest handshake he'd ever given anyone. The corpse shook his hand again and again, and then again. And kept going. By the tenth go, John pulled away and stood facing the corpse.

The dead man looked up from the remains of their handshake and stared at John. A slow, stuttery smile spread on the corpse's face.

"Thank... you..." the dead man said.

John had a horrible feeling he was going to break down in tears in front of his soldiers. He could actually feel his eyes watering. It wasn't something he could afford now, so he clamped down on the feeling, trying to stay present, and emotionless. It was incredibly hard. Whatever he did, he had to avoid thinking about... his wife.

That closed him down, and he took a deep breath. "You're welcome. Thanks for helping my men with the skeletons."

The balding corpse nodded, and nodded back to the dead crowd, and the crowd started nodding, the movement rippling from the front to back across the mass of dead.

Now John felt like laughing. So this is what insanity feels like, he thought, and clamped down again.

"I'm John," he said, finally.

The man became very still and stared at John again, frozen as if he'd just shut down. The effect was unsettling, and John found himself unconsciously reaching for his sidearm. He stopped himself and forced himself to relax.

The man turned on again, and seemed to wrestle with a word, "I'm... mmmm..." he hummed, then shook his head. "M. I'm M."

John raised an eyebrow, but nodded, "M... Good to meet you."

M's face slowly, falteringly, lit up in what John could only describe as joy. The dead smile returned, much more sure, and he nodded again. "You... too." Then his brows dipped and he met John's eyes. "R?" he asked, followed by "Julie?"

It was jarring to hear his daughter's name come from a corpse. He wanted to ask how he knew Julie, but realized M had first asked about R, the boy in their hospital. What was with all these one letter names?

He paused, not really sure how to answer. He could only assume M was R's friend, however that worked out in the world of the undead. And he had gone and shot R, putting him in hospital. This could be a little sensitive.

"R is in the hospital," he finally answered. "Julie... is fine."

"Hospital?" M asked, and John could see he was more confused than concerned. The corpse's brow knit in concentration.

Was he trying to remember what that was? Did M know what had happened to R, that he was... well, this was going to be interesting.

"R is alive, he's... changed. But all the damage he got as a corpse, still there. He's in the hospital to heal from that."

M stared at him in wonder. "Living?"

John nodded, and smirked, then despite himself, the smirk spread into a big grin. "Yeah."

And he realized how very, very long it'd been since he'd grinned, in earnest. A grin that wasn't a thinly veiled threat.

M had turned back to the dead, and had raised his arm, hand curled in a fist, to the mass of dead. "R! Alive! Living!" he yelled, his voice no longer a whisper, and the corpses before him stirred, some moaning, some trying to speak and failing, others mumbling half formed words.

"Exhumed!" he roared again, and more of the dead roared back, arms raised, black mouths gaping.

John looked back at his men, and found most of them looking to him, concerned and confused, fingers on triggers, rifles raising. This many undead in one place, this agitated, was in every other circumstance, deadly, and the soldier's instincts were screaming at them right now. He felt it too. They were going to have to fight instinct and to stay calm. He projected as much confidence as he could and signaled to them all to stand down. Eventually the guns lowered.

M had noticed. He looked back at John with a thin smile, and spoke in a whisper, "We... want to help. Not... eat."

John smirked, "Then we won't shoot."

So, what was their next move? They had a bunch of dead people next to thousands of living. What was the next step? He couldn't just let them walk into the city. The people wouldn't understand, someone would lose it and start shooting, and that would be it.

"What do you need from us?" he asked.

"Contact," M replied, without stutter or delay. His eyes bore into John's.

John arched an eyebrow, "Contact?" he echoed.

M nodded, then reached out again, and clamped his hand on John's arm. There was a click behind them as the soldier nearest to John, Peterson was his name, cocked his M16 and leveled it at M's face.

Both John and M turned to stare at Peterson, who shuffled uncomfortably for a moment, looking back and forth between them both, then slowly dropped the gun barrel.

"Twitchy," M observed, looking back at John.

"Hard to unlearn what's kept us alive," John answered and looked down at M's hand. "You need... touch?"

The corpse nodded, then smirked. "Just not... bad... touch."

John was stunned when he realized the dead man in front of him had just cracked a joke, and that the strangled noise coming from his throat was a laugh. For a long moment, he couldn't speak. The world had done a one-eighty on him, and he'd completely lost his footing. His sureness. Now the dead were talking, cracking jokes and laughing.

Maybe he'd lost his mind? Maybe he was actually locked in some room in real life rocking and babbling to himself. Maybe this was a dream?

He didn't deal too well with maybes. Screw it. This was actually happening, and he had a chance to bring humanity back from the brink. He was going to make that happen anyway he could.

A plan started to form in his mind. A way to bridge the gap between these dead and his living. It wouldn't happen overnight, but it would happen. They just needed a little patience, and a lot of courage.

A lifetime's worth.

* * *

_I adored the book Isaac wrote, but I very much appreciated what Levine did with the story, particularly when it came to how he handled the Colonel. He showed the man as just a little more human, with an ability to change, to hope. I really felt it was one of the more dramatic transformations in the story, at least at an emotional level. While R's is really the most incredible, it's much more physical. He's courageous in choosing to follow Julie, and protect her, but really, he's just following his heart and doesn't know anything different. Grigio has been worn down for a decade, almost worn through. He had to make a conscious effort to believe and trust, something many never learn to do because they can't handle things going south again, or being hurt again. So I loved that from the movie, and that's the John in my story. Perhaps a tiny bit more of a sook really ;)  
_

_I was very happy when M popped up in this fanfic. :D He'll be back.  
_

_Thanks for reading, and leave a comment f you're able. I love to hear people's thoughts._


	12. Where Rules Unravel

"We're losing him!" Stephen yelled, eyes glued to the ECG monitor. The kid's heart beat was spasmodic, arrhythmic, and his blood pressure was ridiculously, dangerous low. And still sinking.

_Shit._

"One more minute," Dan mumbled through his mask, "last stitch."

The ECG wailed as the boy went into cardiac arrest.

Stephen swore loudly and grabbed a long syringe off the med tray. "Epinephrine?"

"2 milligrams, now, I'm closing up now"

Stephen adjusted the volume, tapped the syringe, and drove it between the boy's fourth and fifth rib, sinking it deeply enough to reach the left atrium. He plunged the depressor, and watched the ECG. Sweat trickled down his forehead.

"C'mon c'mon..."

Dan knotted off the last stitch on the boys chest, and readied the defib.

The boy's heart pulsed twice, then flatlined again.

"Dammit." Dan grabbed the paddles, waited for the charge, and delivered the shock. The boy's body arched for a second and relaxed.

There was a tiny blip, then nothing. "Come on!" Dan grunted, and shocked him again.

The ECG beeped, there was a long pause, then another beep followed as the young man's heart resumed beating.

Stephen exhaled the breath he'd been holding. It was a shitty rhythm, but they could work with that. He clapped Dan on the arm, and Dan nodded to him, wiping his forehead on his sleeve. He was clearly beyond exhausted. And a miracle worker. Twice now.

"How many more do we have?" Dan asked, pointing to the blood bag on the IV stand.

"Not enough," Stephen said, shaking his head. "We need more donors."

"Talk to the Colonel, we'll have to get some of his crew in here tomorrow - might even need to set up a direct-"

The ECG wailed again, and they both turned to stare at the flat line, then down at the boy, hoping that something had come loose. Stephen felt at the boys neck. No pulse.

"GodDAMMIT," Dan shouted, and immediately began CPR, "We're gunna pull these again!"

Stephen watched as Dan pushed in rapid succession against the boys chest, then stared at R's face. They were missing something here, something vital.

_Someone vital._

He turned and ran from the room.

Slamming through the door into the ICU, he rushed to Julie's bedside and shook her awake.

"Wha... hey..." she mumbled.

"No time, come on!" Stephen grabbed her arm and half pulled her from the bed.

Julie tried to jerk her arm away, but her eyes finally focused on Stephen's frantic, flushed face, and she frowned, then looked over his shoulder for R.

Her eyes snapped back to his, "Oh god, where?"

He didn't answer, just pulled her behind him as he ran from the room, down the hall and into the operating theater. Dan was still performing CPR, and the ECG was still wailing in that horrible continuous tone.

"Where the hell did you go?!" Dan yelled over his shoulder.

Julie's hand shot to her mouth, "Oh my god!"

"Hold him Julie, okay?" Stephen said as he pulled her to R's bedside. Fresh blood was starting to pool under Dan's gloved hands as he pumped against the young man's wounded chest.

Stephen looked back at Julie, and she was frozen, her face drawn in anguish, clearly in shock. He had no time to make this easy. He grabbed her hand and placed it over R's, then grabbed her other hand and drew her closer, resting her hand on R's shoulder.

"HOLD HIM," he said, with such force that she jerked back. But it helped, even as tears streamed from her eyes, she clasped him close and buried her face in the young man's hair.

"R... R, I'm here," he heard her whisper, "Please... come back."

Dan's arms shook, and he finally stopped, swearing loudly. "Stephen take over, I'm done."

Stephen didn't respond, his gaze passing from Julie, to R's pale face, to the ECG.

"Steve, what the hell?!" Dan yelled at him, "I need you on CPR, NOW!"

"R, it's Julie," the girl cried, her voice breaking, "I... I need you." She closed her eyes and leaned into him, tears falling down her jaw.

Beep.

Dan froze, in the midst of starting one last desperate attempt at CPR, and stared at the lone peak on the ECG as it scrolled off the screen.

Beep.

A big grin spread on Stephen's face. He squeezed Julie gently on the shoulder, and she looked up at the monitor, then closed her eyes in relief and pressed against R again.

"Oh god R... thank you."

Beep... beep... beep beep. The boy's heart returned to a steady rhythm.

Dan stared at Julie, at R, then looked up at Stephen. "I don't... damn well... believe it."

Stephen smirked back at him, "The kid used to be a corpse Dan, this might be a good time to start believing."

Dan just shook his head, incredulous, and watched the monitor for a little while. Finally, he took a closer look at the boy's stitches. "They look okay. Let's get him cleaned up and back in ICU. We can talk about miracles later, after I've had about a week of sleep."

"Yeah," Stephen nodded and set about replacing the bandages. Julie watched him quietly, her hand still entwined in R's, her cheek resting against his head. She looked just as tired as he felt.

"How did you know?" she asked, her voice barely above a whisper.

"Know what?" he asked, then blinked, "Oh, that that would work?"

She nodded.

Stephen sighed. "I didn't. It's just..." he gave a slight smile, "the two of you, together, are the miracle here. It's not just R, it's not just you. Somehow, when you are close, normal rules just... unravel."

He looked down at R, "You broke death together. I was kind of counting on that working again. Glad it did."

Julie sighed. "Me too."

"I think we might need you to stay at the ICU for a while, as close to him as we can get you - you up for that?"

She nodded, and they made the final preparations for moving him. Just before they wheeled him out he noticed the boy's eyes moving rapidly under his eyelids.

"He's dreaming," he murmured, more to himself than anything. For some reason it surprised him, and he wasn't even sure why. The kid wasn't a corpse anymore, why shouldn't he dream?

Julie stared at R, "I've never seen him do that before," she said, her voice full of wonder. "I hope they're good dreams."

Stephen nodded slowly, "Yeah."

But inside, and he didn't want to share this with her, he doubted they were.

* * *

_Just so you know what you're in for, this fic is over 50,000 words spread over 33 chapters. Much more to come. The next is a very pivotal one for R._

_As always, hope you'll leave a comment with your thoughts. And thanks for reading!_


	13. The Healer

Consciousness came back to him slowly, as a high pitched sound teased at his awareness, drawing him up from the dark. His alarm?  _No._  Not an alarm. Someone... yelling, screaming?  _What the hell?_  He was trying to sleep and someone was screaming.  _I've got classes this morning, dickheads!_  God, his dorm sucked. People were always doing stupid shit way too early.

The screaming grew louder, more frantic, and it wasn't just one person, it was... something else...

_What... is that?_

Turning his head to the sound, he tried to open his eyes, but everything felt slow, wrong. Something crunched loudly under his head, and the surface beneath him was cold and hard.

_This... isn't my bed._

Confused, he opened his eyes, and immediately squeezed them shut, groaning against the supernova that had just gone off in his brain.  _Owowow... too much too much..._  He tried to turn away to his other side, but a sudden twisting pain flared in his right knee, and he fell back to the hard floor. Something was wrong with his leg.  _What the hell's going on?_  Opening his eyes as slits, he blinked up to darkness at first, a darkness that slowly resolved to a blurry mass of shapes as he turned towards the light again. Something, many somethings were moving there in front of him. Faces? Were they the ones screaming?

Were they waving at him?

Frowning, he tried to rub his eyes to clear them, but his hand came away wet, and his face started to sting fiercely.  _What... the...?  
_

Blinking back towards the light, the moving blurs gradually coalesced, and he found himself staring into the dead-eyed, gore-smeared faces of two corpses, screeching as they smacked and clawed at the window in front of him, desperate to get in.

With a sharp cry, he jerked back, thrusting out an arm out to defend himself. But while the dead gnawed and punched at the glass, they couldn't get in, and that's when he noticed the large shard of glass sticking out of the back of his hand. Blood seeped from the wound, running in rivulets through his fingers.

Stunned, he stared at it, not quite understanding what he was seeing. _It... doesn't hurt, why doesn't it... oh shit... owowow..._  Head swimming in shock, he grasped the shard with a shaking hand and pulled it out, grunting against the sharp agony as it came free.

Everything snapped into focus with the pain - he was in the bus, they'd crashed, everything was upside down, the dead were trying to get at him, his dad...

Where was his dad? Where was Brandon? Twisting frantically, he tried to get up, to get away from the window, but fell back on his side again with a cry - his leg was pinned under... something, throbbing painfully. For a moment he thought he'd been grabbed by a corpse, and kicked out, only to find that one of the seats had collapsed from the ceiling, trapping him. Hands slick with blood, he tried to push the seat up, but he had no leverage, and cursed loudly when it wouldn't budge.

Movement caught his eye beyond the seat. Towards the back of the bus, surviving passengers were trying to help each other up, and wailing over others who weren't moving.

_Are those people dead? Holy shit..._

The red haired lady was weeping softly across from him, and he realized with a shock that she was holding her dad, his head misshapen and bloody against her chest. As he stared at her, at the horrific mess of her father's head, his mind reeling from the sight, there was a sudden movement through the windows behind them.

The windows the bus had landed on. Shattered and open to the outside.

"Look out!" he yelled, and she looked up at him through swollen eyes, not understanding, as emaciated white arms thrust through the opening and clamped onto her.

"NO!" He lunged for her, but his leg twisted painfully and his hand fell short. She was still staring at him, eyes wide, mouth falling open in surprise, as the dead dragged her and the corpse of her father out of the bus.

Shocked, he fell back, and could only watch in horror as a mass of dead fell on them just beyond the window. From the tangle of grey, blackened, and blood spattered limbs, came the sounds of her screams and the wet tearing of their feeding.

Heart hammering, his mouth dry as dust, he backed up against the other side of the bus as much as his pinned leg would allow, looking for anything he could use as a weapon against the corpses. There were broken pieces of glass, but no way to hold them without cutting himself, and he couldn't find anything that would pass as a club. The dead were still slapping up against his window, but it was holding, so he tried to ignore them, and the panicked whimpering of the passengers huddling against the rear of the bus. He glanced quickly towards the front, where his family had been, but more seats and...  _jesus, another body..._  lay there in a pile, blocking his view and the exit.

Turning back to the broken windows across from him, he swallowed as he realized that while the dead were still feeding, it wouldn't take them long to come back for more. If he didn't get someone's help with this seat, he'd be next. Throwing a desperate look at the group huddled at back of the bus, he waved his arms wildly to draw their attention.

"Hey!" he cried, in the loudest whisper he could manage, "I need help! I'm stuck!"

They turned to stare at him, eyes wide, faces drawn and pale. A young blonde man in a blue t-shirt finally stood and started carefully towards him, but an older woman, probably his mom, grabbed him by the arm and tried to pull him back down, pleading with him to stay.

"Please!" he cried, and fought to free himself one last time. He managed to get a slight purchase, and the seat shifted a fraction of an inch, then fell again. "Goddammit!"

With a piercing squeal of twisting metal, the back emergency door was violently wrenched open. The groans and screeches of the dead filled the bus as a mass of corpses clawed their way in, throwing themselves immediately on the huddled group. The boy who'd been arguing with his mom fell screaming under a woman in nurses' scrubs as she tore viciously into his throat. With a loud wail, the mother grabbed at the dead woman, desperately trying to pull her off of her boy, and was set upon by a young man in a charcoal suit that barely restrained bulging intestines. In a wild panic, the other passengers backpedaled away towards the front of the bus, and at that moment the undead outside the broken windows turned and stumbled their way.

Seeing the danger, he grabbed the arm of one of the fleeing passengers, a man a little bit younger than his dad, and pulled him away from the windows. The dead started to enter under the jagged glass, arms groping wildly until they latched onto the other passengers as they scrambled past, trying to get to the seats towards the front. With a wild scream, one girl thrashed out at the arms holding her, desperately trying to free herself, but another corpse emerged and sank its rotted teeth through the thick muscle of her shoulder. In the next moment, they were gone, yanked quickly from the bus to the waiting pack of dead outside.

Frantic with fear, he shook the older man, "Help me, please!" and tried to pull him by the arm to his leg. Wild eyed and dazed, the man jerked away from him, straight into the arms of the dead nurse who'd killed the boy at back of the bus. Her mouth, smeared red and strung with gore, clamped onto the man's neck from behind and ripped backwards, sending a gush of blood across the seats and over him as he cringed against the window. As the man fell, the corpse watched him kick and buck for a moment before dropping to bury her face deep in his throat.

Unable to free himself, unable to help, he squeezed his eyes shut, not wanting to see any more.

There was no way he was going to escape. All he could hear around him now was the feeding, the groans of the dead as they ate. And he was next. Any minute now he'd feel the cold hand of a corpse close on him, and then he'd be ripped to pieces.

 _Oh my god._  His heart thundered painfully as terror set his nerves screaming. _  
_

Would they ignore him if he stayed really still? Played dead? Maybe they'd forget him? What else could he do? Slowly, he slid down the window to lie curled against the glass strewn floor, and turned his head away from the feeding corpse, trying to block out the sounds of tearing flesh and cracking bone.

There was a shuddering impact against the glass, and he flinched, determined not to open his eyes.

It came again, and it felt so different than what the dead had done before that he finally looked, squinting against the light.

 _Dad?!_  His heart jumped in his chest as he saw his dad outside, trying to break through the window. There was another heavy impact as his father tried to kick in the glass, his face twisted in desperation. A figure appeared next to him, in the bright light, and pushed his dad away. The soldier from their bus, he was crouching down, lifting a gun-

Suddenly realizing what was about to happen, he flinched away, covering his face with his arms. A second later, the window exploded inward, showering him with glass.

The sound hammered his eardrums, the combination of the gunshot and the shattering window pane leaving him dazed, his ears ringing.

Arms grabbed him roughly, and with sudden horror he realized he was being pulled in two different directions, outside, and  _inside_. His eyes shot open and he stared into the grey, blood soaked face of a naked, emaciated woman with wolfish eyes, missing her lower jaw. She pulled at him, her hands digging into his arm like claws as she tried to drag him closer. The tongue in her mouth squirmed through the air like a fat worm.

He screamed, a high pitched cry he'd never made before, and swung wildly, catching the woman in the side of the face with his fist. The hands from outside the bus pulled again, and he felt the strain against his leg.

"My leg's stuck! Help!" he yelled at them, and swung again at the corpse as her head snapped back and she clawed for his face.

There was another deafening retort, and a black hole appeared at the woman's temple. She fell to the floor by his side, lifeless, her black tongue slapping to the ground under her ruined face.

The window next to his pinned leg disappeared in another explosive spray of glass, and the soldier reached through, grasping both sides of the fallen seat and yanking back with a grunt of effort. There was a release of pressure, and he pulled his leg desperately, just as the dead nurse swiveled from her meal, drawn by the sudden motion. The seat rose some more, and suddenly, his leg was free, and immediately snatched out of the air by the corpse.

Shocked by her speed, he went to kick her off, but the dead woman stopped his other leg as well, clamping her cold hand like a vice around his ankle. Her touch made his skin shudder, and he desperately bucked his legs to get free.

It had no effect, she was just too strong. Her silver eyes flicked to his.

Heart hammering, he stared back, too stunned to speak, to yell or move. He felt the arms wrap under his shoulders again from the window.

Those eyes... they weren't empty, blank, like the other dead he'd seen. Like the woman with no jaw. There was something  _there_. Something... intelligent. His mouth fell open as he stared back at her, trying to understand what he was seeing, what she was trying to say.

_Why is she-_

Striking like a snake, she snapped her jaws over his injured ankle, scissoring her teeth through his skin. As his blood spilled down her chin, her eyes swiveled back to his.

They pulled him then, and her blackened fingers merely let him go. Her grey eyes stared at him from behind the fallen seat as he was yanked into the blinding sunlight.

Arms enfolded him, rocked him, clapped him on the back. He felt everything, but heard nothing, his ears still ringing from the gunshots, his mind still stuttering over what had just happened.

_Bitten._

His eyes fell from the broken windows of the bus to his leg, where his jeans had rolled back down over the wound, obscuring it. Suddenly his dad's face filled his vision as rough hands cradled his head. His dad was crying, smiling, saying something that he couldn't hear.

_I've been bitten._

Then there were dead, crawling out from the broken windows. They dropped one after the other, black holes appearing soundlessly on their foreheads, black gore spattering the side of the bus. The soldier was there, waving his handgun at them frantically, they had to move, move

"MOVE!" the man's bark finally broke through the silence, and he felt strong hands lifting him up, supporting him, and they stumbled away from the bus.

Looking back, he tried to understand what had happened. The bus lay upside down on the grass just short of the side road, wedged up against the carcass of an 18-wheeler, the cabin twisted around towards them. No wonder the front had fared better, they'd been protected from two sides by the truck. The dead were coming through now though, crawling and squirming out of the two shattered windows like maggots from a skull.

The nurse wasn't among them.

The look she'd given him flashed through his mind, as he turned back to run, leaning against his father as the wound in his leg flared painfully with each step. The corpse had known  _exactly_  what it was doing. She'd deliberately bitten him. It didn't... make sense. The dead weren't supposed to think, they weren't supposed to feel, they were just mindless eating machines, that was it. But... she'd done it  _on purpose._

And now... he was...  _infected._

The reality of what that meant hit him in the chest like a physical blow, and he found himself suddenly struggling to draw a decent breath.

_I'm... I'm going to die. And I'm going to turn into one of those... things._

He'd never seen it happen to anyone, he had no idea how long it took. It didn't matter. It was inevitable. Nobody had a cure. One bite and that was it.

_Holy shit._

Why the hell was he running with his dad? They should have left him behind. There was no freaking point to saving him, he was just slowing them down!

"Dad," he croaked, then stopped because he had no idea how to say what he needed to say. Wincing with each footfall, his leg barely supporting his weight now, he looked up, and saw a small group of survivors running ahead of them, the soldier out in front, taking pot shots at the dead on the road leading into the airport terminal. His little brother was there too, just ahead of them, holding his arm tight against his chest. Brandon glanced back and flashed a weak smile.

_Oh my god. How the hell do I tell them?_

"Dad, I-I can't..." his throat caught painfully and he knew he'd start crying if he kept talking. And he realized it wouldn't help anything to say it now. They had to keep running, they had to get to the airport. If he could just make sure that happened, then... then that was what was important.

"You can son... you're... doing great," his dad said, misunderstanding of course, his breath coming in ragged gasps as he ran. He flashed his son an encouraging smile.

He nodded back at his father, his heart squeezing tightly in his chest, tears welling in his eyes. Putting his head down, he focused on moving forward, as fast as he could.

* * *

_This was one of the longest chapters in the story, and a major turning point. Hope you enjoyed my take on how R got infected. I've had some folks tell me that the movie shows he was bitten on the back. Can't say I agree. Yeah, when he's in the shower there's a little something on the left, a scar, but it doesn't look like a bite to me, and I didn't notice it before I wrote this._

_I thought it was interesting that Isaac chose R's calf (think it was his calf) for where he was bitten in New Hunger (read if you haven't!).  
_

_Re my choice of a bus crash - coincidentally, there's a shot in the movie as R and Julie are driving away from the airport that shows a school bus crashed on the side of the road. I didn't get the idea from that, but it's an interesting link anyway!_


	14. Watching Over You

Julie lay on the thin hospital bed pulled up against R's own. Her arm was curled under her head, her blonde hair splayed over her pillow, her hand resting gently in his. She watched him. The steady rise and fall of his chest as the ventilator hissed and jerked, the faint pulse of life in his neck, the tiny movements of his eyelids as he dreamed.

She was absorbed in every detail of his face - the soft curve of his lips, the small scars that seemed angrily flushed with red now as they healed. His cheekbones, much softer now than they had been as... as a corpse. It was hard to think of him that way now.

He frowned deeply, the motion dramatic but fleeting. He'd done that a few times now, and Julie hated to see it. Every time those brows of his drew sharply together, her heart ached, and she wished she could ease whatever was haunting him in those moments. She squeezed his hand instead, and whispered softly that she was there. He'd relax then for a few moments, his featured easing into stillness, until slowly the dark mood, whatever it was, gathered over him again.

Eventually she realized that she was now focused on him as much as he had been fixated on her when they first met, and her cheeks flushed red.

But she couldn't pull away. She realized she could watch him for hours more, lost in everything that made him R, now so beautifully human. It wasn't that he was very handsome, even with the scars on his face - heck, even as a zombie he'd been strangely attractive. It was this fragile life he held now, his past that she had yet to discover, the name that he'd lost. His struggle to be with her, to connect with another human being, and the fact that in doing so, he'd found his own soul. This is what she was in love with, the yearning, hopeful being who'd clawed his way out of a grave to be with her, because he wanted to  _live_.

A lone tear fell slowly down the side of her cheek, and she let it fall.

What would happen next? She had no idea, and it scared her. What would all of their lives be like in a year, if -  _when_ , he pulled through this? She'd seen the change in him, and knew that the other dead were changing. And she'd heard about the skeletons, those horrible demonic things, how they were being hunted now, destroyed. Everything was changing, and somehow she and R were at the center of the tempest. The source of it. There was a terrifying expectation there, and she wasn't sure what to do about it, how to stuff down the fear coiled in her gut. Would she do the right thing? Would what they had grow, or would it fade away, leaving them all lost and confused? Would he change back if she wasn't with him all the time? Would he... die?

That idea horrified her. He'd actually died in that other room. His heart had stopped beating. If Stephen hadn't brought her in to be with him... What kind of responsibility was that? How could she hold his life in her hands like that?

She stared at him, and a moment back at the plane flashed in her mind. The first time he had said it, sitting on the arm of the chair, those incredible words.

"Keep you safe."

She echoed it in the present back at him, without really meaning too, her voice a soft whisper.

And he had. He'd saved her over and over. She was his responsibility, and he never flinched from that. She had to find that same strength and be there for him now. To keep  _him_  safe.

A frown passed across his brow again, and only then did she realize that her knuckles were white against his hand. She was squeezing it so hard her hand actually hurt.

"God, sorry... sorry," she whispered to him, and let go for a moment, shaking the pain out, trying to restore circulation.

"I always seem to get you hurt," she said softly, lacing her fingers in his again, and lightly traced the curves of his index finger with her thumb. "I hurt you when I left you didn't I... back at that house. After you told me..."

The feelings of that evening washed over her again, and she closed her eyes against the wave. Again she felt the odd need she'd had for him to be a little closer that night at the house, the confusion she'd felt when she realized just how much it would hurt her if he was killed, shot in the head, just like any other corpse. That strange realization that he meant so much more to her than she truly admitted to herself or even understood.

And then the moment when he'd placed Perry's watch on the bedside table.

That horrible moment, when everything inside her lurched. The horrible shame and guilt that had clawed at her gut, at finding herself drawn to a being who had ripped the life from the man she'd loved.

She'd heard him apologize, after she'd turned away, but she couldn't take it. All she'd wanted to do at that moment was retreat inside herself, curl up in a little ball and not feel. Not feel so terribly, horribly, wrong.

And when she'd woken with a start, and found R curled up beside the bed completely unresponsive, she knew she had to leave. It was time to go. He would be safe away from her father, and she could leave the guilt behind and move on. It had been so incredibly hard though. Stepping out of the doorway he'd broken, driving away in the car he'd crashed, without him. The further she drove, the tighter her heart felt, until when the car finally ran out of gas and she had to walk the last mile to the wall, she was sure she would start sobbing and never stop.

Just like she was crying now, holding his hand, lying next to him in this improvised ICU. The tears fell freely, and she let them, realizing she was letting go a lot of the pain that had followed her around this past week. Even before Perry died. The pain of seeing his hope wither and fade. His death. It was good to let go.

Finally, the tears slowed, and she wiped her face against her pillow and released a long sigh. It felt... better.

She was going to be okay. R was going to be okay. They'd just take everything one moment at a time, and let fate unfold as it would.

Julie drew closer to R, curling up against his body as much as she dared amidst the wires and tubes. Resting her head against his shoulder, she traced his fingers in her own and sighed.

"We're going to be okay," she whispered, and gradually relaxed into an easy sleep.


	15. The Ending

It felt as if they'd been running forever. Focused only on the few square feet of faded pavement in front of him, he struggled to keep up with his father's pace, desperate to not be a burden, to not slow him down.

It was getting harder. Not because of the pain. The wound had stopped hurting soon after they left the bus.

It was the numbness. The strange chill he was feeling, spreading from the wound. Icy tendrils spiraling up through his veins.

His lower leg was falling asleep, or at least that's what it felt like. He couldn't even feel his foot anymore. It flopped uselessly as he tried to run, no longer his to control.

_This is the infection. I... don't know what to do. I can't..._

Squeezing his eyes shut, he pushed the thoughts aside and focused on moving. That was the only thing left. Just keep moving and get his family to safety.

They finally reached the airport's outer perimeter fence, and an armored truck, machine gun mounted topside, approached at speed and squealed to a stop on the other side. The soldier that had led them from the bus ran up to the fence, waving wildly to two uniformed men who emerged from the truck armed with automatic rifles. "Where's the gate?!"

One of the men pointed to his right. "Half a mile south. You guys move ahead, we'll clear out your tail."

The soldier turned back to the group and waved them on, "This way people, not far now, let's move it!"

"We're going to be okay son," his dad panted, clearly exhausted. "Just a little further." He smiled up at him, readjusting his grip.

He could only nod mutely, and accept the help his father gave as they half ran, half stumbled with the group to the gate. Behind them came the rapid stutter of automatic rifles as the soldiers fired through the fence into the small crowd of undead that had followed them.

As they neared, he saw two guards dressed in standard fatigues and helmets standing watch at the gate. They quickly stepped forward and raised their rifles.

The soldier put his hands up defensively as he approached, "We're part of the bus convoy, open up."

The taller, younger guard moved to the latch, but hesitated before opening it, "What happened to you guys?"

"Guess," the soldier snapped back. He shook the gate fence, "Come on, what's the hold up?"

The other guard stepped forward, a much older man with piercing grey eyes, and gestured over their group, "Any infected?"

Time froze as he heard the guard's words.

_Oh shit._

This was it. These guys were going to find out he'd been bitten, and they were going to shoot him in the head. Just execute him in front everybody. That's what happened to the infected, he'd  _seen_  it happen. Nobody took any chances with this stuff. It was something that had been in the back of his mind since they'd left the bus, but standing in front of someone with a gun who would actually do it, made it too disturbingly real. The vice closed around his chest again and he swallowed hard.

Did he look infected? Would they know just by looking at him? They couldn't see his leg, but he was starting to feel... sick. Nausea was hitting him in small waves, making his gut clench and his mouth flood with bitter spit.

_Jesus, how long do I have?_

Gritting his teeth, he shook his head at himself. He couldn't let it get that way. He couldn't turn into one of those things. This... this was the only possible solution. But it was too soon. He needed to see his family get on the plane. He had to. They couldn't do... this... just yet.

"No infected," their soldier replied, and time suddenly moved forward again.

"How about the kid with the cut up face? Why's he need to be carried?" the guard asked, the gun leveled directly at him.

 _Shitshitshit._  He closed his eyes.  _Please don't let Brandon see, don't let him see..._

"Glass from the bus, and a seat fell on his leg, can we go through now?"

There was a pause, then, "What about that kid's arm?"

He opened his eyes, stunned. They'd dismissed him just like that. And they were worried about Brandon? These people were idiots.

"Dislocated from the crash, back in place now," the soldier answered, then continued, pointing out a few of the other survivors, "She's got a broken wrist, he's got a broken rib, and I'm getting a migraine from standing on this side of the goddamn fence. Let us. The. Hell. In. Now."

The two guards glanced at each other, then finally nodded and pulled open the gate.

"The plane's ready to go, you guys need to get to it asap. Do NOT go into the terminal - it's overrun."

"Got it," the soldier answered, "Ride?"

The younger man who'd opened the gate nodded back to him, and lifted his com to his mouth, hitting the switch. He waited for the tinny confirmation on the other end before speaking. "Got the stragglers at the south gate, need a truck here."

He waved them through as he spoke, his eyes scanning each of their group in turn as they passed.

 _Don't look infected, don't look infected..._  He tried to stay calm, tried not to let his deadening leg betray him, and hobbled through the gate with his dad. The guard seemed to watch him a little longer than the rest. He avoided meeting the guard's eyes, keeping his head down.

"You don't look so good sir," the man said, directly to him, the tone of his voice carefully measured.

_Shit._

"He almost died in a crash buddy, I don't think you'd be looking much better," his dad shot back, clearly pissed at the attention his son was getting.

Despair settled like a lead weight in his chest as he listened to the anger in his dad's voice. What was the point of this? Why was he pretending to be okay? He'd thought he was helping, making sure his dad and brother kept moving, kept fighting. But it was just going to make everything so much more horrible in the end.

"Dad," he started, but his father immediately interrupted him. "No son, I'm not going to listen to this asshole single you out, he has no idea what you've been through."

It was the young guard's turn to interrupt, "Sir, with all due respect,"

"No!" his dad spat, "Shut the hell up, and leave my son alone!"

"Alright people!" shouted the soldier, stepping into the group, "Ride's here, lets go!"

The group turned to watch a large khaki truck tearing towards them, the kind with a canvas tarp over the back painted in a broad camo pattern, and started towards it as it came to a stop. His dad glared at the guard, daring the man to speak, then turned away, guiding him towards the vehicle. From the corner of his eye he saw the guard motion the soldier over, the man's eyes remaining fixed on him as he and his father walked away.

Nausea rolled over him again and he groaned, sagging for a moment against his dad.  _So much for not drawing attention._ He struggled to tamp it down and move.

"I've got you, you're okay," his father said. He smiled encouragingly, but his eyes were filled with worry.

They reached the truck, and he glanced back at the soldier and the guard as his dad climbed aboard to give him a hand up. They were both staring at him. A cold finger of unease traced down his spine. He didn't like being watched like that. It made him feel... wrong. Like... he was already... dead.

The soldier clapped the guard on the back and ran over to him.

"Here, let me help," the man said, taking his hand for a moment then supporting him as his dad pulled him up. The soldier's grip was firm, and lingered, as if he was trying to get a read on whether he was sick or not.

 _Great._   _So he probably knows, or at least suspects. Awesome._  As he slumped down on the wooden truck seat, flopping back against the tarp, his body shivered violently. God, he really felt like crap.

The truck rumbled loudly, jerking into gear, and they pulled away from the gate.

"You look like shit," came his brother's voice. Looking over, he found Brandon sitting next to him, staring up at him with eyes showing a lot of white. Scared. God, he hated that. He hated that Brandon was afraid, and he couldn't make things better.

Brandon was still cradling his arm too.  _Jesus, that must have hurt._

"Thanks," he smirked back, then frowned, glancing at his brother's arm, "you okay?"

His little brother shrugged, trying to look smug, but winced instead, "Yeah. Sucked when they popped it back in." Brandon looked up at him, "Your face is a wreck."

"So I heard," he answered. He had no idea what had happened to his face. Gingerly he reached up and felt around, wincing as he found deep cuts on his forehead, cheeks and mouth. Touching them stung terribly.

"Bye bye... modeling career," he joked, trying to make his brother feel better. Brandon rolled his eyes and smirked. At least that was something.

He looked down at his hands. They were shaking slightly, pale, and losing feeling.  _So this is how it works? The world just falls away from you?_  His lower leg was completely numb now, and the icy chill was spreading through his thigh. It really was like a limb falling asleep, without the pins and needles. And it was never going to wake up again.

_Shit._

A wild shiver seized his body with sudden ferocity. Leaning forward to try and hide the shakes, he had to clench his teeth to stop from groaning. Nausea swamped him, and he squeezed his eyes shut, desperately fighting the urge to throw up all over the truck bed.

_I'm really dying. This is really happening. Jesus._

He had to last until his family was on the plane. Then everything would be... okay. It would be okay. Just till then. Slowly the shivers receded, but the sickness clung to him stubbornly, twisting through his gut like a worm.

"I think you have a concussion son," his dad said next to him, rubbing him gently on the back. He heard his father shift slightly and address the soldier sitting opposite them, "Is there a medic on our flight?"

He couldn't stand this, his dad's blindness to what was happening. Or hell, maybe he did know, he just wouldn't or couldn't accept it. It didn't matter. It was going to destroy his dad when he found out the truth. Looking up at the soldier, wanting to see his reaction, he found the man watching him intently.

The soldier knew. He had to.  _Fine._  He looked pointedly back at the man and shook his head.  _Not a concussion. You know what this is._

The man's eyes darkened for a moment, before the soldier turned to address his dad, "We'll take care of your son once we get to the plane."

Blood pulsed in his ears as his heart pounded frantically. _He's going to take care of me... holy shit._ He was pretty sure he'd just arranged his own death. That was freaking messed up. How were they going to do it? They'd get his family out first right?

The truck started to slow, and he looked out the back to see what was going on. He could hear shots being fired, and men yelling, but so far couldn't see from where. The runway stretched away to the left, illuminated by yellow strip lights. The sky was turning a deeper blue as the sun lowered and yellow wispy clouds drifted in the air.

It was kind of beautiful.

It was the last sunset he'd ever see.

Reality slammed against him, as he sat there, fighting the nausea roiling in his gut. Panic made his nerves taut as bowstrings and he started flicking the bands at his wrist again, his numbing fingers groping awkwardly to grasp them. Jesus, he couldn't take this anymore. He just wanted to grab his brother and hug him, till Brandon got annoyed and they'd start throwing lame made up karate moves at each other. He wanted his dad to hold him and tell him everything was going to be okay. To hold him until everything  _was_  okay.

Above everything, he just wanted to live. Even if the rest of the world was dying. It wasn't fair. He'd had so many dreams back in college, dreams of traveling, really seeing the world, exploring the hidden places people rarely got to. He'd been in a band doing some good stuff, and wanted to see how far they could go. He'd been ready to make his mark on the world.

Then the world changed, and those dreams didn't seem to have a place anymore. But there was always a part of him that thought things would get better. That he'd still have a chance.

And now, he had nothing. He was...  _ending._  Despair fell upon him, heavy and cold.

The truck made a quick turn and stopped, and now he could hear the steady whine of jet engines, and see an army barricade in the distance, facing the airport terminal. There were flashes of light as soldiers fired at a crowd of undead streaming from the building towards them. A mass of silhouettes stood at every gate window, bodies, arms, heads slamming against the glass. The dead.

He swallowed, stunned at the sight. How could there be so many? As he watched, a lone corpse appeared in one of the covered jetways nearby and fell twenty feet to the ground. A soldier standing nearby executed it with one shot to the head.

How long could they keep this up? How much ammunition did these guys have? They didn't look like they had the situation under control at all. Jesus, he needed to get his family on this plane and the hell out of here.

A man in fatigues appeared at the back of the truck and met with the soldier who'd walked over to help people off. They conferred for a moment, their conversation drowned out by the engine noise, then the guy on the ground nodded and waved for people to step down.

Fear lodged in his throat. Could he just run away? If he ran, maybe he'd have a chance to get free of all of it, or maybe they'd shoot him cleanly and he wouldn't even notice. Or maybe they'd clip him, and leave him to die coughing up blood on the tarmac as they flew into the sky.

_Oh god._

"Hey."

It was Brandon. He turned to look at his little brother. Would he be okay? Could they make it? Was it going to be any better where they were going? It had to be. He couldn't stand this if it wasn't.

"Yeah?" He answered, having no freaking idea how to say ' _I love you Bran, look after dad for me, live and be amazing, okay_ ', and rubbed his numb hand against his eyes as they blurred in sudden tears.

His brother pressed something into his palm. He looked down. It was his iPod, wound with his ear buds. The sight broke the dam he'd hastily built to keep himself together, and his tears fell freely, streaming down his face. He tried desperately to rein it back in, to not lose it completely in front of his brother. He just wouldn't understand, and he couldn't stand him being more scared.

"I went back to get it. It was important to you," Brandon whispered, and went to hide it into the pocket of his red hoodie.

Shaking his head, tears still trickling from his eyes, he stopped his little brother and tried to hand it back to him. "You..." his throat caught in a sob, "you should have it. I'm... not..." He couldn't finish.

Brandon grabbed the iPod and forcibly crammed it in his hoodie pocket. "Why would I want your crappy music? Just take it okay? Please?"

He nodded slowly, unable to look his brother in the eye, then gathered him in a sudden hug, squeezing him tightly. "I-I..." But he couldn't continue, the words just wouldn't push through the lump in his throat.

His brother squirmed and pulled away, his face even more frightened than before. "What's going on? You're really burning up..."

Before he could say anything, or shake his head because there was nothing to say, a heavy hand fell on his shoulder, and he found himself looking up into the dark eyes of the soldier.

The man turned to his little brother, "You need to go with your dad while I take care of your brother here, alright?"

His breath hitched sharply. It was... time. As his brother got up to go, he reached out and grabbed his hand, squeezing it gently.

Heart aching, his throat raw, he forced himself to speak, "Take... care of dad for me. I... love you Bran."

Frowning, his brother just stared at him, "Why would you say that? You'll take care of him too, right? Why say-"

The soldier interrupted him, "Your father's waiting for you son, go on now."

Frowning deeply, his little brother walked away, glancing back at him once more before joining their dad, who had already been led off the truck. More gunfire flashed beyond them, and he saw that the soldiers at the terminal were frantically waving at each other and falling back, loading into vehicles as the dead surged forward.

_Are they running away? _Holy shit.__

The dead had overwhelmed them.

 _No no no..._  his family wasn't safe, they had to get out of here!

"Show me." The soldier spoke again in front of him, and he realized they were the last two left on the truck. Beyond the opening at the back he saw his little brother talking to his dad and pointing back to him.

Why were they still there? What the hell were they doing? He wanted to yell at them, to tell them to get on the plane, but another tremor passed through him, more violent than any before, and he had to clench his jaw to keep his teeth from clattering. He didn't try to hide it. He couldn't anymore. The soldier stepped back, his hand rising quickly to his sidearm.

Squeezing his eyes shut against another drowning wave of nausea, he groaned as his mouth flooded again. It was going to happen soon. Too soon. The spasms were worsening, and the cold had reached his spine. He could feel the icy tendrils radiating through his chest.

_I don't want to die..._

"Son, I need to see the wound. I can't help you till I do."

 _Fine._ With slow, clumsy fingers, he reached down to his jeans, and tried to pull them up. Nothing worked properly, his hands were cold and numb, and he fumbled a few times before giving up.

The soldier crouched down and lifted his jean leg, exposing the ugly black wound underneath, oozing a dark thick liquid that stuck to his pants. The skin around the wound was grey and bloodless, and traced in a radiating web of branching veins.

_Jesus, that looks horrible._

Strangely, he was oddly detached from the sight. Mostly because he couldn't feel it, and it didn't look like his leg anymore. It looked... dead.

_And that's what I'm turning into._

Motion at the opening caught his eye again, and he looked over to see his father, his face drawn in deep concern, trying to get back in the truck. Another armed man in fatigues clasped him on the shoulder and pulled him firmly back down.

"Get your goddamn hands off me!" his father yelled, slapping the man's arm away, "I need to get to my son!"

Grief rose in him.  _Dad I'm so sorry..._

With a deep sigh, the soldier turned from the bite and motioned to the guard outside the truck. As the guard looked over, the soldier pointedly shook his head.

The guard gave a curt nod and promptly grabbed his father and brother, pulling them away and out of view, as the soldier slowly stood up and unclipped his sidearm.

 _Oh god... oh god oh god_... They were going to do it, right here, right now. His breath came in ragged gasps.  _I don't want to die!_

His dad was losing it somewhere behind him, cursing and calling his name. Squeezing his eyes, he tried to ignore it, tried to focus on breathing, the sound of the plane, anything but the desperation he could hear in his father's voice. There was a scuffle, a loud crack, and his little brother screamed for their dad.

His eyes shot open. What the hell? What were they doing to his family?

"L-leave them alone!" he yelled, trying to get up. His legs wouldn't cooperate. He tried pulling himself along the bench, desperate to reach the opening, but his hands weren't his anymore and it was hard to get purchase.

"They're fine son," the soldier said, pulling his sidearm from the holster, "I'm sorry we didn't get to you sooner. I know you're going through hell right now. Keep still and I'll make it quick."

"No, I-I have to help... dad," he cried, and tried to stand again. His unwounded leg supported him for just a moment before buckling beneath him, and he crashed to the metal bed of the truck. The chill seemed to rush forward then, swiftly enveloping his chest, turning his muscles to cold stone. Gasping, he struggled to pull in a breath. It was like sucking cement through a straw. His vision started to swim with sinking stars.

_No... not now, not now... have to help..._

Fighting against the growing stillness, the cold numb death trying to claim him, he struggled to rise again. The sound of the jet engines around them rose in pitch, and he realized the plane was leaving. Were they on it? They had to be! He had to see, had to know they were safe! Barely managing to get up on his elbows, he slowly dragged himself forward.

"Son, you're not making this easy. I'm sorry," came the voice of the soldier, and suddenly a heavy weight pressed down on his back, pinning him in place. He could feel the tread of the soldier's boot, and the thought brought a spike of anger through the oxygen starved fog of his mind. The bastard was holding him down like an animal. He was going to shoot him in the back of the head like a wounded goddamn dog.

There was a metallic sliding click as the soldier above him loaded a round from the magazine.

_Oh god... Dad, Brandon, I'm so sorry..._

There was an explosion of gunfire, and for a moment he thought he was truly dead, because he didn't feel anything at all.

_What a relief..._

"Get the hell away from my son, right now."

 _Dad?_  That was his dad's voice... Why was his dad here?  _Nonono... Supposed to be on the plane..._

The pressure vanished from his back, and he felt the soldiers heavy boots move away. "Sir, your son is infected. You can't help him. You know that."

"Yeah, I know that. Throw your goddamn gun over here."

The soldier sighed, "The dead are about to overrun us you moron, I'm not giving you my only weapon."

"Fine, pick him up and pass him to me."

"Sir!" the soldier barked, "You are an idiot! Look at the dead behind you!"

There was a click of a gun being cocked, a heavy pause, then strong hands pulled him from the floor of the truck and dragged him to the edge. He struggled to get his hands under him, to try and support himself, and saw his dad and his little brother, framed in the glowing light of the terminal as his dad pointed the gun over his head. Behind them a crowd of undead were falling on the last few holdouts of the barricade.

"D-dad..." he rasped, fighting for breath, and reached past his father, trying to get him to see how much danger they were in. His dad glanced down at him, then passed the gun to Brandon.

"Brandon, take this, shoot that asshole if he tries anything."

"Uh.. okay." His little brother grabbed the gun with both hands, looking uncertain at first, then steadying, his eyebrows angry.

The sight made his mouth twitch in a smile.  _Brandon... you twerp..._

His fathers arms wrapped around him and he was lifted from the truck bed. Only then, as his dad walked slowly backwards, did he realize that the plane was gone. His heart fell as he saw it taxiing towards the runway.

"Dad... the plane," he moaned, pointing at it.

"I wasn't about to leave you son," his dad answered softly, looking down at him with a sad smile. Turning then, he started to run, and yelled back over his shoulder, "Brandon! Come on!"

His world became his dad's face, framed in jarring motion against the night sky, illuminated in broad strokes of yellow as they ran past each of the tarmac lights. He couldn't see where they were going, what the plan was. He only knew that his dad held him close, and that that was the best place he could ever be.

It was okay now. He wasn't afraid anymore.

As he let go, relaxing against his father's chest with a final thin breath, the chill swiftly swallowed his heart.

The muscle that had beat for him without fail for twenty years trembled.

And stopped.

And he died.


	16. A Heart Breaking

Mark ran for his life, with his son in his arms, heading for a small remote hanger he'd seen off the side of the tarmac. That would do, he could regroup there, plan the next step. What was the next step? He didn't know. It didn't matter. They were together, that's what was important, and he'd work something out. They just needed to get away from the dead. Where was Brandon? There, running by his side, still holding that gun. Brave kid.

His chest felt like it was going to explode, each breath tearing at his lungs, pushing against a band of iron wrapped around his heart. They had to keep going, keep going. He had to get his family to safety.

Why was his son so still? _Oh god._ Despair made his heart lurch, but he pushed it down and pushed on, until they finally reached the hanger. He wanted to stop, to collapse against the corrugated wall until he could breathe again, but they needed to get inside. Away from the dead. The door was locked.  _Dammit._  Holding his son's head against his chest he slammed into the door with his shoulder until the lock shattered, and they fell inside.

Closing the door, kicking a heavy shelf down across it, he quickly scanned the large room, but there were no dead that he could see. A light aircraft, lots of supplies, huge shelves and cargo pallets against the far wall. No dead.  _Thank god._

They were safe.

"Dad..."

 _Brandon._  His breath coming in heaving waves, he looked at his youngest son, and frowned as he saw the tears falling on his son's face. Brandon wasn't looking at him. He was looking at...

Mark looked down, and his heart shattered.

"Oh no." He choked back a strangled sob, and sank to his knees.

His eldest boy lay against him in absolute stillness, head lolled over his arm, eyes half-lidded and dull.

No breath left him, no pulse trembled at the side of his neck.

"Oh god... Ro... nonono," he moaned, and frantically cradled his son's face, sweeping back his hair, shaking his shoulders, trying to bring the life back into his boy's eyes.

But it was useless. His son was gone.

Dead.

A desperate wail rose from his throat as he drew his son to his chest and held him tight, burying his face in his hair and sobbing against him.

Images of his boy's life flashed swiftly through his mind as the grief overwhelmed him. At the hospital, Claire smiling at him through tears with this incredible miracle in her arms. His beautiful boy. Bringing him home, both of them terrified they'd do something wrong. His wife rocking their child in the living room, smiling wearily his way as she lulled their little one to sleep. The first game of catch, his first day of school, their first fight...

Somewhere, distantly, Brandon was speaking to him, his voice urgent, strained. "Dad... dad we have to leave him here. He's going to..."

Mark turned and blinked at his youngest son, not understanding for a moment. Then it dawned on him, and he froze against his boy's body.

_He's going to turn._

Another sob shook him, but he drew in a deep breath and choked it down. Brandon was right. Nodding through streaming tears, he slowly lowered his son's body to the floor, gently cradling his head.

God, he didn't want to let him go.

He brushed his boy's cheek. Already his skin was cold, pale. Was it growing greyer as he watched? They had to get away from him.

Squeezing his son's cold hand one final time, Mark stood and engulfed Brandon in a hug. His boy finally broke down and shook against him as he cried, the gun hanging limply from his hand.

"I'm so sorry Bran," he mumbled to his little boy, then kissed his head and gently took the gun.

He looked at the weapon, and down at the corpse of his son. He'd never seen it happen, so he had no idea when it might, but his dead boy was going to turn into one of those things.  _Was_  turning into one of those things. The smart thing to do would be to shoot him now. Save him from it.

But he couldn't. He couldn't even point the gun at his son's dead body.

He tucked the firearm in the back of his jeans, and squeezed his youngest boy tightly.

"Bran, I know this is hard, but I need you to check around for food and useful stuff, okay? We're going to try and fly out of here after all."

Brandon pulled from him and nodded, trying vainly to wipe the tears from his face. He stared down at his brother for a moment, then bent over him, doing something Mark couldn't see.

"He should have music," his son said finally, standing up again. As his face crumpled with more tears, he turned away and went off to look for supplies.

Mark looked down. Brandon had set his dead brother up with ear buds, going to his hoodie pocket. He reached in and found the iPod, playing. The memory of their fight at the school came back to him, and he felt his throat close again. Shaking his head against the guilt and grief he tucked the iPod back in his son's pocket and with one final look, walked to the plane.

The hammering started shortly after as the dead reached the door to the hanger. It was going to be tricky getting the main door open and the plane out, but he was going to try. His dad had been a pilot, and he'd spent hours with him in the cockpit of a Cessna, watching him, mimicking him, learning what he could as his dad took time to show him the basics. Mark knew in theory how to take off, and how to land, but if worse came to worse, he could just taxi it out of the airport, and the blade in the front would come in handy.

He did all of the pre-flight checks, but cursed when he saw the fuel gauge. It was almost empty. No flight then, at least until he could get it fueled. Mark had no idea where that was in the airport, and that was a big problem.

There was a strange noise from near the door where he'd lain his dead son. He froze for a while, his eyes widening, then looked for Brandon.

"We have to go son, come on," he called, unease twisting in his gut.

Brandon rushed back, eyes fixed on the door - he must have heard it too - carrying a box full of tools, a jug of water and some snack bars. They tossed it in the back, and he set his son up at the wheel, then hit the ignition. The propeller spun to a blur.

"I'm going to open the door, then run back here, you get ready to push the plane forward okay? Just like this."

His son nodded, eyes drifting back to where they'd laid his brother. Where they'd heard the noise.

Mark got out of the plane, ran to the large hanger door chain, and hesitated for a moment before turning to look to his right, to the place they'd left his son's body.

The sight hit him in the chest like he'd been punched.  _Oh dear god no..._

The corpse of his son was sitting up.

Hunched forward, turned away from him.

He wanted to vomit. Hands shaking, he quickly worked the door chain, and his breath caught as he saw his dead son's pale face turn towards the grating metallic screech of the door.

_Oh shit._

The chain jerked to a stop in his hands. Surprised, he turned back to a wide open door and found himself face to face with a small crowd of dead. As the group screeched and lurched forward, he stumbled back and ran to the plane, adrenaline making his nerves twitch, and jumped in as Brandon slowly pushed forward on the throttle.

"Dad!" Brandon cried, pointing towards the other door.

His eldest son was standing now, where they had left him, head hanging oddly, listing slightly.

"I know son. Don't look. Don't look at him." He took the controls over from Brandon, and pushed the plane forward towards the door. The dead were streaming through now, this was going to get messy.

_Just stay there son, don't come to the plane, please please don't come to the plane._

"D-daaad," Brandon moaned, squirming in his seat and crying as he watched his older brother turn towards them in short jerky movements.

"Dammit!" Mark cried as the plane's engine stuttered briefly, threatening to stall. "Don't you dare!"

The dead started to surround the plane, thumping against the thin metal walls, pale hands clawing at the windows, leaving dark trail marks against the glass.

Just as they came level with the door, a corpse wearing a stewardess outfit stepped directly into the propeller. It carved into her shoulder and chest, sending a spray of black gore across their windscreen, and she crumpled into it, her head disappearing under the blades.

The plane stuttered again and the engine stalled, bringing the propeller to a standstill. A dark mottled liquid coated the dented blades, dripping thickly off the ends.

"Shit!" he yelled, and desperately tried to restart the engine. It sputtered for a moment and died, then wouldn't crank again. The fuel gauge was now deep in the red.

Brandon was leaning into him, as far from the window as he could get, as the needy faces of the dead twisted in black snarls outside his door.

He held his son tight, his mind racing over their options. They still had the gun, with maybe eight rounds in the magazine. He might be able to shoot the dead on his side, get them out...

Mark shook his head at the idea, there were too many. The dead would pull him out of the plane and go for his son next. He'd dragged his son into a deathtrap. Both of them. And one had already died because of it.

"God Bran, I'm so sorry. This is all my fault."

"Dad... he's... he's looking at us," Brandon whispered, and pressed even closer to him.

Mark's gaze drifted above the dead crowding the plane to the corpse of his eldest son, still standing near the door where they'd laid him. The grey, bloodless face of his boy was tilted oddly towards them, his mouth loosely open, and his eyes...

"Aww, god," he moaned into Brandon's shoulder and hugged him close.

That wasn't his son anymore. The eyes were colorless, empty. Unblinking, and held nothing of the life of his boy. This was some other thing now, some thing he should have put down when he had the chance. His son wouldn't have wanted to turn into that.

"I'm so sorry," he whispered, and his voice broke.

Brandon looked at him, turning away from the dead slapping against the thin door. "What do we do now Dad?"

Mark looked his littlest one in the face and suddenly started to cry. He hadn't meant to, he was trying desperately to keep it together, keep his sons going, be the strong father who could handle anything. Dear god, he'd failed so miserably.

"Dad?" Brandon's mouth fell open as he watched his dad cry, completely unsure of what to do.

Mark shook his head, rubbing the tears out of his eyes, and clamped down on the pain, stuffing it inside.  _Not helping, stop it! We're still alive, work with it, find a way to keep going. There has to be a way out of this!_

Clearing his throat, he shook his head again, and gave his son a quick hug.

"I'm sorry buddy, didn't mean to scare you," he took his son firmly by the shoulders and gave him an intense look, "We're going to make it out of here, okay? I promise."

And as he said it, he felt it as the absolute truth. A reassuring calmness washed over him. Okay, they had the gun, that was something. They were protected in the-

The window behind Brandon shattered inward, showering them with glass, and the reaching hands of the dead clawed at his son's shirt.

"DAD!" Brandon screamed, trying to free himself.

"Get down!" Mark screamed, pushing his son to the side and leveling the gun point blank against the head of the corpse that held his boy. The explosion was deafening in the small space of the aircraft and the dead man jerked back, falling into the rest of the swarm.

 _Too many too many!_ He fired again and again as new corpses took the place of the fallen, until the explosions stopped as the gun fell silent, ammo spent.

"SHIT!" he yelled, and started kicking at flailing arms and grey faces, until one of the dead snared his jeans and started to pull.

"Dad!" Brandon screamed, putting his arms around him, trying to help, as the dead dragged him towards the open window.

Frantic, he grabbed the leftmost wheel and strained to pull himself back into the plane, kicking against the iron grip that held him.

A gunshot sounded with a loud crack, and the hand suddenly released him, sending him tumbling back into the cockpit. Scrambling back up, he watched as more dead dropped and the few remaining corpses started to lurch towards whoever was firing the gun.

He turned to look and couldn't believe it. It was the soldier, leaning out the side of the truck that he'd pulled up in, the same truck he'd pulled his son from, taking shots at the dead. The asshole had come to their rescue.

 _Oh god._  His son. The soldier would mow him down just like any other corpse. He couldn't see that right now, couldn't handle it. Where was... his searching eyes found him, still standing where they had left him, sheltered behind the other door.

Why hadn't he attacked? Mark blinked, not quite understanding what he was seeing. His dead son's eyes were closed, and he- _it_  was swaying in place, a strange slow rocking motion side to side.

He had never seen any corpse do that with it's eyes closed. Never even seen a corpse with closed eyes for that matter.  _What the hell?_

Then it hit him, but he didn't believe it. But he couldn't think of any other explanation. White headphones still snaked up out of his dead son's pocket, stark against the red fabric of his hoodie, to his ears.

Mark was pretty damn sure the corpse of his boy was  _listening_  to the music Brandon had given him. Dumbfounded, he stared at the bizarre sight until the urgent blast of the truck horn made him jump.

"-damn well KEEPING you?!" came the angry bark of the soldier, snapping him back to reality.

_Jesus, what am I doing?_

"Come on!" he cried, grabbing Brandon and pulling his son out of his side of the plane. The corpses were focused on the soldier, only three of them now, but he could see more walking through the tarmac lights towards them in the distance. The soldier wasn't firing anymore and had probably run out of ammunition. Mark needed a weapon. He reached back into the Cessna and grabbed a heavy wrench from the box Brandon had brought, then turned to his son.

"You run to the truck when I tell you to, okay?"

Brandon nodded, his eyes showing too much white.

After steadying himself with a couple of deep breaths, Mark shot out from the side of the Cessna and swung the wrench directly into the skull of the nearest zombie, an old guy in a loud t-shirt. The head split inward, and the corpse dropped like a stone. Keeping the momentum, he brought the wrench up again, straight through the jaw of a corpse who must have been barely a teenager when she died. She staggered back, but righted herself and lurched back to him, her jaw hanging oddly on her face. The last corpse, an overweight man in sweatpants, with broken bones jutting grotesquely from a blackened stump of an arm, turned from the truck and stumbled towards him.

"Now!" he yelled back to his son, and swung again at the dead girl, crushing her temple.

Brandon didn't pass him. As the final corpse lumbered his way, he glanced back at the Cessna and saw Brandon standing next to the blades, staring across at his brother.

His dead brother was staring back, his body no longer swaying, but shuffling forward, intent now on Brandon.

"BRAN!" he cried, horrified, and went to rescue his son, but the corpse fell on him from behind, knocking him to the ground. With a yell of panic, he kicked the thing off and rolled back up, finally crunching in the rotten skull with a desperate swing.

Brandon screamed.

 _Oh god no!_  Mark spun around, in what felt like slow motion, and ran to his youngest son, scooping him up just as the corpse of his eldest reached out for his brother with a pale hand.

"Back off!" He roared at his dead son, hatred for everything that had happened to his boy pouring from him as he stumbled backwards, holding the wrench up and ready to strike.

That pale face turned towards him, slowly, and suddenly he forgot to breathe. For a moment, a heart wrenching moment, he saw his son looking out at him, through those horrible eyes. Lost, confused. His  _son_.

"Get in the GODDAMN TRUCK!" roared the soldier.

But that was his son, he couldn't...

The truck started to pull away as more dead finally reached them from the terminal.

"No! Wait!" he cried and ran to it, dropping Brandon off in the back before jumping in after him. He turned back quickly, his heart tearing over what he had just seen. His son was still there, still in that thing, they had to-

"Dad!" Brandon screamed, as a corpse from the crowd of dead they were passing grabbed the side of the truck, and started to pull itself in.

Mark crushed the thing's hand with the wrench and it fell to the tarmac, rolling in a tangle of limbs. The truck bumped a few times, and more dead rolled away beneath them, and then they were free of the swarm. He looked back to the hanger, and there was his son, his hunched body taking tentative steps after them, one arm raising as if he could pull them back.

Dear god, what had he done? How could he leave his boy behind? What the hell had he done?

A cold hand closed on his shoulder and he twisted around, shocked to find himself face to face with his dead child. His son's face was ashen, the pale eyes sunken and shadowed, dried black blood caked around his mouth.

Groaning in horror, he watched as his boy opened that black mouth and whispered, " _Why'd you... leave.. me.. D-dad?_ "

He screamed as his son fell on him and tore the flesh from his face.

* * *

_In my take, most of the zombies are relatively thoughtless, driven by instinct and that's it. The Nurse is a little unique, and R is certainly unique, and M by close association. I touch on what I felt made R unique here._

_Music reaches him, gives him an echo of humanity to connect to. That makes the difference._

_Thanks for reading! Things are going to get a little more crazy before they get better! :D_


	17. Letting Go

Mark jerked up in bed, still screaming, and thrashed against sweat laden sheets until reality dawned and he realized where he was. His room in the apartment, shadowed in deep blue, a single ray of yellow light falling across the floor from a solar powered streetlight outside.

"Oh my god," he whispered, and fell back onto the bed, an arm draped across his brow.

It was always the same. That goddamn dream. The memory that had turned into a nightmare to torment him over the years. He'd never be free of it.

It always started the same. Back at the bus, desperately searching for his son in the wreckage, hearing the screams. His son's prone body behind the glass. Thinking he was too late, but seeing the tremor of fear on his boy's face, waiting for the dead to come. Dragging his son out of the bus, holding him, so happy to see him alive, and so completely not understanding why he looked so lost, so shocked.

Such a fool. Such a goddamn idiot. If only they'd been quicker in getting him out, in getting to the rest of the bus. If only he'd insisted his son sit with them.

 _If only._  Mark groaned and turned on his side, trying to free himself of the guilt. Even after all this time the if only's haunted him.

It was pointless. His son was dead. Might even be truly dead now, he hadn't been back to the airport for a little while. The last time he'd barely made it out alive, and hadn't even spotted the thing that looked like his boy. Brandon had exploded at him about that. Yelled at him for being unable to let go, for being a fool, suicidal. He'd said some really hard words. That he had a father who was more interested in a walking corpse of a son than the living breathing one he shared an apartment with. Brandon had apologized shortly afterwards, but that had really hurt.

He couldn't help it. He'd left a piece of his heart back at that place. He'd seen a trace of his boy in the corpse they'd left behind. Now it was walking around and eating people, and he guessed that was his fault too. How many deaths could have been avoided if he'd just let the soldier do his job?

 _Screw that asshole._  It still made him shake, remembering that moment, coming around the side of the truck after the fight, and seeing that bastard over his son, boot on his back, moments from executing him.

The memory washed over him, stirring the old anger. Mark tossed again in bed, and rubbed his face, pushing against his eye sockets as if to obliterate the vision. It didn't work. He rolled to the edge of the bed and sat there, squeezing the metal frame till his knuckles went white, then got up to get some water from the kitchen.

Brandon's bed was empty.  _What a surprise._

It was a quiet night. They'd managed to get an apartment in one of the older sections of the settlement, and while it wasn't hooked up to running water anymore, or at least, you couldn't trust the water you got, it did have electricity, thanks to some adventurous wiring by one of the residents, who'd managed to tap into the large solar grid set up for the military. The water they used was collected rain, supplemented with tanker runs every other week, and stored in their own personal tank.

He filled a cup under the spigot and stared out through the window across the dark street, trying to shake the anger and grief.

The door banged open, and his son walked through, unsteady on his feet.

They exchanged a glance in the dim light. Brandon looked away first, and shuffled over to their ratty couch, falling into it heavily.

"Nightmare again Dad?" his son asked, with a tone that suggested he knew the answer. His voice slurred as he spoke, and he sat there, staring off at nothing.

It'd been eight years since the soldier had pulled them from the airport and gathered them with the last group of survivors. They'd lived off anything they could find, and whatever army rations were left behind, until they started building a steel wall against the dead and claimed the heart of the city as a true refuge. A small island of humanity in a sea of corpses, that grew and expanded as more survivors sought them out, including the man who currently headed the whole operation - the Colonel.

His son was now twenty, but wore the years like a man in his thirties. Dark shadows swallowed his eyes, his cheeks were hollow and bristled with beard, and his mouth sat in a thin tight line. And he'd apparently been out drinking again. Where Brandon was getting it he had no clue, alcohol was banned in the city and the Colonel had a zero tolerance policy when it came to drinking.

"Son," he started.

"Dad," Brandon echoed, and turned to look at him, his eyes cold and bloodshot.

"That shit-"

"Don't," his son snapped back.

With a sigh, Mark fell silent. The past week had been hard on Brandon. Two of his good friends had died during a scavenging raid, guys he'd hung out with a lot on his downtime from working on the wall. It had hit him badly, and came shortly on the heels of losing another friend who'd fallen to his death while working construction with him a few weeks before.

But his son had always been a bit hollow, ever since the night at the airport. Laughter didn't come easy to him, and a pall of hopelessness that hung over the whole community at the best of times had soaked into him deeply, absorbed into his heart, becoming a dark armor of sorts.

It was hard watching his son change like that. And he knew he hadn't fared much better. The nightmares were a constant, at least once a week, and that urge to go, back to where they'd left him, to find his son, had turned into a morbid fascination. He would make his way to the airport, and stationed on a rooftop nearby, would scan the sea of dead through binoculars until he managed to spot that distinctive red hoodie, now torn and spattered with dried blood.

Then he'd watch his son. The thing walking around in his sons body, yet still somehow... his son.

Once, when things had been really bad, when he'd heard of an attack on one of their scavenging parties early on, and someone brought back the iPod covered in the blood of one of those killed, he took a rifle to that same spot. He sat there, tears streaming down the rough stubble on his face, and waited for his boy.

When his dead son finally appeared, heading towards one of the planes on the tarmac, he'd leveled the rifle on the wall, and stared at the back of his head through the scope. For what felt like an hour he tracked his boy, finger on the trigger, blinking through tears until he finally realized he couldn't do it. Then he'd collapsed on the gravel and sobbed until he was spent.

For some reason that had helped him. Brandon hadn't had that chance, and all that crap was still wound up tight in him. He'd sedate it with the drink when he could, but it never went away. It just deepened the lines on his face.

God, he had to do better for his boy. Brandon was right, he'd been too obsessed about a corpse. That was going to change. No more goddamn airport visits, no more if onlys.

"Thought I saw him the other day y'know," his son mumbled, settling deeper into the couch.

"Who?" he asked, grabbing another cup of water from the tank.

"My dead brother."

A cold chill went up his spine and the cup froze at his lips. He turned slowly to his son, "What?"

"Red hoodie n' all."

Mark blinked, not understanding where the conversation had gone, "You... where!?"

Brandon smirked and gave a small laugh, "Thought I'd lost my mind. Almost fell off the support I was working on."

"Brandon, where?"

His son threw his arm up, "Walking through the farm section! Just walking down the freaking street, arms swinging, head up, like some normal person!"

Mark stared at his son, his mind spinning over what he'd just said, trying to make sense of it. Walking through town? Like a regular person? There was no way... Was that just drink talking? But... that didn't sit right, and actually... he remembered his son coming home the other day, much more quiet than usual, distracted. He'd asked him why, but his son had just brushed him off.

Surely it had to be someone else? They would have heard by now, if there'd been...  _oh god._  The alarms the other night? The big military operation? They hadn't heard much more beyond that - what if he  _had_  been here?

"I almost fell, a buddy grabbed me, helped me back up, when I looked again there was nobody there." Brandon sighed and rubbed his eyes with the back of his hand, before laying his head back against the couch, "So there you go Dad, seems your insanity is catching."

Mark couldn't think of anything to say, not even in reaction to the little dig Brandon had thrown his way. His mind raced with questions - had his son been here? Why would he be here? What would bring him to the settlement, and why alone? That wasn't something corpses did - they traveled and hunted in packs. People thought they were mindless, but something was obviously going on up there for them to organize like that. So... why?

_Was it possible?_

God, he was doing it again. Why was he back in the same headspace he'd been trapped in for eight years? His son was dead, and certainly wouldn't be strolling casually around this place. Whoever Brandon had seen must have been somebody else. It was horribly ironic that he'd just resolved to stop this nonsense, and his son had handed him a big fat what-if to stir everything up again.

No more.

"Bran, I think... I think it must have been someone else," he said gently, looking over at his son.

Brandon was relaxed against the couch arm, fast asleep, his breathing slow and soft.

Sighing, Mark placed the cup back on the counter, and walked over to watch his boy for a moment. It was good, in a way, to see him like this. Untroubled, relaxed. There was an ease to his brow that just wasn't there during the day, when his eyes were open and their screwed up world seeped in.

He went and grabbed the blanket from Brandon's cot then returned and gently straightened his son on the couch, removing his shoes, before draping the rough woolen material over him.

Bending over his son, he kissed the top of his head, then headed back to their room.

It was time to finally let go. Time to truly be here for Brandon. Time to let the past be.

Easing back into bed, he lay on his back and stared at the dark ceiling above. He let the memories come, and the pain that came with them, as he gazed up into that dark space, finally focusing on a moment where his eldest has been truly happy. Their first ballgame, just after he'd caught the foul ball. A smile lifted the corners of his mouth as he remembered the joy in his boy's eyes, his wide grin, his laugh.

With a sigh, he whispered into the empty room.

"Goodbye son."

* * *

_Thanks for reading everyone!_

_Don't know if anyone picked up on this, but the moment where Brandon sees R running through town, that's the moment in the movie just after R has emerged from the subway and starts looking for Julie._

_I wanted to point out something in this chapter that has a bearing on something that happens in the movie, at least for me. I don't really elaborate on it though, because it makes things a little more complicated._

_Mark talks about Brandon having a hard time of it because he'd lost two friends in a scavenging raid almost a week ago._

_That scavenging raid was the same one that Julie, Nora and Perry were on. In fact, I'm pretty sure Perry was a friend of Brandon's (he worked on a wall team after all, as did Perry's dad). I'm also pretty sure that Brandon would have told Perry about his dad, about his obsession with his dead brother. I wouldn't be surprised if Brandon talked about his brother, how they lost him, and mentioned what his brother looked like as well._

_And I decided that when Perry looked down the rifle at R, just as he stood up and turned to go to Julie, Perry realized who he was staring at. That this was the brother of his friend. And that's why he didn't shoot him in the head, with one clean shot, when he had all the time in the world to do so._

_That's at least, where my mind went. But it really does make things a little more complicated, so I'll leave it as a possibility. ;)  
_

_Oh, and his other friend was that dipshit playing a freaking video game in the middle of a zombie apocalypse. Darwin Award material right there. Every time I see the movie (and let me just say, I've seen it A LOT), when that moron says 'No dice, almost at level five' I start flailing my arms and mouthing off at the screen._

_Imbecile. You have a REAL GUN. You are in a LIFE AND DEATH situation! WHY ARE YOU PLAYING A... oh I give up..._


	18. Devoured

He never felt his heart stop. He didn't feel any pain or panic. Just a sinking sensation, as if being swallowed by thick layers of wet earth, drawn down deep into a pervasive darkness, an absence of all.

And there everything was torn from him. Memories were exposed, stripped away and devoured. Everything that made him who he was, dissolved and absorbed by that absence, a great black hole of un-life.

And he was left empty. Hollow.

In darkness. No sound, no sense of time, no feeling.

Eventually, a flicker of awareness stirred within, and pulled itself up out of the dark. Something searching, something needful.

Something hungry. Something desperate to fill the yawning emptiness inside.

His eyes opened. New eyes, seeing the world for the first time. The world was yellow and grey. Bright lights speared down through him.

He stared up at them, unblinking.

**_Sit up._ **

He did. He saw red, blue... clothes... shoes. Jeans.

_**Not important.** _

Something loud. Something moving.

**_Important. Look._ **

A door. Opening. He watched it rise.

**_Stand._ **

Slowly, he rose. He needed something. It was important, he needed it now. Something he could... smell.  _Hungry._

**_Turn._ **

_There._  Two there. Need _... want..._  what they have, what they're hiding inside.  _Hungry._

Sound builds to a crescendo around him, through him, and he stops.

Music. Someone... singing?

He listens.

**_Stop._ **

_Beautiful._ He listens, and his body starts to move, drawn into the heart of the music.

**_STOP._ **

_No._  He listens.

 _It feels..._   _I feel... I am. Where am I? Why am I here? Where is this place? I don't...  
_

The music fades away.

_I..._

_**Stop.** _

_I... I can smell them, they... have what I need. I'm... hungry._

_The smaller one, looking at me. He smells... important. What beats inside him, I want that. Need it. He's... he's..._

_I know... him?_

_**NO.** _

_Hungry. I need what he has._

_**TAKE IT.** _

_The older one is here, grabbing the smaller one, shouting at me. Angry. Looking at me._

_He's... I feel... Why do I feel? Where am I? Who is he?_

_I know... him, I know...  
_

**_Nothing._ **

_I'm hungry._

_They are leaving. Leaving me. Why are they leaving me? I need them... I...  
_

The music builds again. Filling his head, filling his body. Rhythms and voices filled with life.

He listens... and feels...

_better._

* * *

_Something is directing R in a way here, directing all of the dead, pushing them to fill their emptiness with more death. Something that's certainly driving this whole zombie thing. I loved the way way Isaac described it in the book, through Julie, about digging down deep, too far, releasing something dark into the world. Can't find the exact phrase now, but it really struck a chord with me.  
_

_Another short one coming up, back to the present. :D Thanks for reading._


	19. Devouring

Beep.

Darkness. Peaceful.

Beep.

_What is that?_

Beep.

**_Open your eyes._ **

Light. Ceiling. Machines surround him, loom over him.  _Why?_

_Hungry. Empty..._

**_Starving._ **

_Yes._

"R?"

Voice. Scent, smells important, smells good. Need that.

**_Look._ **

"R...are you okay? ...Oh my god... your eyes..."

Her voice. Her face. Beautiful. Blood pulses just underneath. He wants what she has inside.

_So very hungry._

"What are you - ow! R, let go of my arm!"

Her skin is soft, and he finds it tears easily. Good, easier to get inside her to what he needs.

"R STOP! You're hurting me! No! NO! AHH-ggk"

He tears the scream from her throat, consumes it, and it feels good. He fills his emptiness with what she has inside, and now he feels...

_Better._


	20. The Death Between

R shot up, his heart hammering in his chest, and gagged as something shifted painfully in his throat.

_Something... on my face... choking!_

Panicked, he ripped the thing away, gagging again as a long plastic tube came up, scraping his throat raw. Coughing violently as it finally came free, he fell back on his side and tried to understand where he was, and what the hell had just happened. There were machines surrounding him, he was in a bed, a hospital bed? Tubes and wires ran everywhere, attached to his arm, his leg, his neck...

"R? Oh my god, R! It's okay, you're okay!" came a panicked voice to his left. Startled, he flinched away from the sound. It was Julie, next to him, holding his arm. Just as she had been in his... nightmare? Was that what that was?

_I can still taste her blood..._

_No!_  Jerking back from her touch, he pushed himself away, but everything started to pull and  _hurt_. He felt like an animal trapped in a snare. Frantic, he grabbed a bunch of stuff to tear it free.  _I have to get out of here, get away from her!_

"No, R, don't!" Julie cried, desperately reaching for his hand.

"STOP!" someone yelled, and he froze at the utter panic he could hear in the person's voice. He sought the source, and saw a figure in a white coat who'd just entered the room, a bearded man with a tray who was now running to his side.

"Don't touch anything!" the man snapped, and raised his hands as he approached more slowly. "I'm not going to hurt you, but you're about to do something really stupid. You need to move back into bed, okay?"

R didn't know who the man was, and didn't like being told what to do, but the fear coming off of the man made him edge back into the center of the bed. He watched as the... doctor? quickly worked to secure everything he'd almost ripped away, taking extra care with whatever it was that was going into his leg.  _Jesus. Is that my blood?_  What the hell were they doing to him?

Julie reached out to touch his arm, and he jerked away again, not wanting to look at her, smell her...

"What... what's wrong?" she asked.

"Don't want... to hurt you," he mumbled, the dream still fresh in his mind - the tearing, the feeding. His stomach twisted, and he realized, skin prickling with horror, that he was actually hungry. God, he had to get out of here - he hadn't eaten in so long, why was he here? Everything felt scattered and jumbled inside his head, like puzzle pieces shaken inside a box. He vaguely remembered an accident, lots of glass... being shot, and running...

"Why would you," Julie started to ask, but the bearded man interrupted her.

"Hungry?" he asked, in a carefully nonchalant tone.

R flinched at the word, looking up at the doctor for a moment before looking down at his own hands. With them, he'd torn his last meal from someone's broken skull. The memory of the killing flashed in his mind, mingling with the vivid sensations of his nightmare, and when his stomach growled he couldn't take it anymore. His body lurched forward and he vomited over the side of the bed.

What came out was dark, almost black, and thick, which just made everything worse. It splattered on the cold concrete floor beneath the bed and over the pants of the man standing there.

"Aw christ!" the man yelled, jumping back from the growing puddle as R retched again and again, no longer in control of his body as it heaved everything in his stomach to the floor.

A warm hand touched him gently on the back.  _Julie._  She rubbed his skin softly, letting him know she was there. It soothed the sickness in him, and gradually the nausea faded. He fell back against the side of the bed, shaking.

"Okay, um... Right. Ah. Whatever you do, don't touch  _that_ ," the man said, pointing at the black pool on the floor. He looked at R, "You need water, I have to change, I'll be right back. DON'T pull anything out okay? Okay."

R stayed where he was, curled against the edge of the bed, spitting more of the black liquid to the floor. He felt wretched, exhausted. Shivers rippled through him, making his teeth hurt as he clenched his jaw against the shakes.

Julie's hand lifted from his back, and his heart fell. It wasn't like he could blame her for drawing away, he'd just barfed up corpse gore all over the floor, after pushing her away, after dreaming about eating her. What the hell was she doing with him anyway? He was a freaking monster.

The bed shifted and creaked, and suddenly her entire body lay against his own, blazingly warm. Her arm drifted over his chest and her hand hovered gently over his heart.

R closed his eyes, overwhelmed by the incredible feeling of Julie pressed up against him, her warmth seeping into his bare skin.

 _No no no..._  he was supposed to get away from her, keep her safe...

Instead, he sought out her hand with his own, meshing his fingers with hers. The shivers slowly subsided, and they both lay together, silent and deeply content.

"Hey, drink this."

R's eyes snapped open. Blinking, disoriented, he looked up to see the bearded man was back, holding a glass with a straw out to him. It dawned on him that he'd actually drifted off. Julie's arm was still linked in his, but she was stirring too, he could feel her head moving on the pillow behind him.

"You two sure got comfy," the man spoke again, smirking.

R reached for the glass, and grimaced. There was a terrible taste in his mouth. He spat over the bed again, then looked up at the man. "Sorry," he apologized.

The man looked down at the new spatter on the floor. "After the mess this morning, that's nothing. In this case, much better out than in. I'm Stephen by the way."

R nodded, and took a sip from the straw. As the cool liquid filled his mouth and trickled down his sore throat, he paused. When was the last time he'd ever taken a drink of anything? Images flickered in his mind then, distant, jumbled like a kaleidoscope. Drinking a can of soda in a hallway where people were running with books, a glass of something amber, music and laughter, at a table laid out with plates of food, warm smiles. The images faded.

 _Those were... memories, of who I was before..._  His mouth parted in wonder at the realization. Eager to bring them back, he tried to concentrate on what he'd seen, but the images fell through his probing thoughts like sand. Frustrating. He took another drink, but no echoes returned.

"That's probably enough water," Stephen said, and took the cup from him. "I'm going to need you to sit up now, okay?"

R sighed. He didn't want to move from Julie. But she squeezed his hand and withdrew, shifting back to give him space. Rolling over, he lifted himself up while the doctor adjusted the bed, then lay back again. Julie reached for his hand and he took it, squeezing it gently as he looked up at her. She was smiling at him, her eyes bright and warm, and he smiled back, finding himself drawn into those blue eyes like a moth drawn to the light of the moon.

"Hey. Hey, lovebirds," Stephen said, clicking his fingers, "focus here okay?"

R turned to him, irritated, and found himself staring at a plate covered with a square of green cloth. He glanced up at Stephen.

"You need to eat," the man said, simply.

The skin on his arms prickled. What was under the cloth? Living food or dead food? A growl rumbled from deep within his stomach, and he suddenly felt very... empty again. The nightmare flickered in his mind, bringing back the queasiness, and he shook his head.

"I don't want to," he said, but his stomach groaned loudly.

"Clearly you do," Stephen answered, and pulled the cloth off the plate. Underneath lay a cup filled with clear brown liquid, an apple and a thin piece of bread.

"Oh my god, an apple!" squealed Julie. R turned to her and smirked, amused at the sound she'd made. She looked up at him and grinned.

"Go on," she said, her eyes flicking to the plate and back to him.

R sighed. God, he was really, really hungry. He wondered how long it would take before thinking that didn't make him think of tearing into people. His eyes fell and a deep guilt filled him.

"Well if you're not going to," Julie said, and snaked out an arm, grabbing the apple from the plate. Before he could react, she'd taken a clean bite and was grinning as the juice ran down her chin.

"Oh my god. That's sooo good," she said, in that voice he remembered from the airplane when she'd eaten the canned fruit. The thought made him smile, and he watched her.

"I'm going to put this here, okay?" Stephen said, setting the tray on the bedside table. "R, make sure you eat this, not Julie."

Julie smirked at Stephen as he walked away, then held the apple up to R's face. "You have to try this," she said.

He peered at the apple, with its white flesh inside, its red skin outside, and a thought skittered across his mind that for most people, it was the exact opposite. His face fell.

"Oh come  _on_ , here," she said, dropping it in his hand. She lifted his hand to his mouth and grinned at him again. The smile faded as she searched his eyes.

"What's wrong?" she asked, frowning with concern.

R wasn't sure how to answer that. As truthfully as possible was probably the best, but... he didn't know how she would react. He didn't want to scare her or disgust her. And he didn't want to revisit what his last meal had been.

But she guessed. "Does eating make you think of... eating people?"

R nodded.

A death sat between them then, on both of their minds. The death of Perry.

And was abruptly dismissed as Julie pushed the apple in his mouth and smirked, "Too bad. Eat."

He jerked back, surprised, and closed his mouth over the sweet fruit. The juice flooded his mouth, lighting his brain with sparks of brilliant sensation, overwhelming his mind. When he came back to himself, the apple was gone and his hands were wet with juice.

His stomach burbled happily, and he looked at the plate again, hoping that another apple had taken its place. Sadly, no. When he looked back, Julie was looking at him skew eyed.

"You ate the whole thing!" she said. "I mean, core and all, and the seeds!"

"I'm sorry, I just... wow," he said, his lips lifting in a smile.

Julie grinned. "See? Told you." She glanced past him to the plate, "What's next?"

"Um," R looked over, "brown stuff and bread."

She made a face. "Probably won't be as good, but eat up," she said, nudging him with her hand.

He set the plate on his lap and pondered the brown liquid.

"I think it's broth," Julie offered. "Try dipping the bread in it."

R did as she suggested and slowly chewed the tangy soggy bread. No sparks, but the smell was lovely. He closed his eyes as he ate, enjoying the textures and flavor. When he opened his eyes again Julie was staring at him, her head propped up in her hands.

"Tables have turned mister, I get to watch  _you_  eat."

R laughed at her.

Julie gasped. "R!"

"What?" he asked, alarmed.

"You laughed!" she cried.

He blinked.  _I did?_  Oh. Strange, it felt completely natural. He lifted his shoulders in his usual shrug.

She rolled her eyes. "And now shrugging again. Seriously though, I've never heard you laugh before." Her smile grew wide. "It was wonderful!"

R smiled back, caught up in her joy.

"My mom had the best laugh," he said, his voice soft with affection. "We used to..."

The words fell away from him, and his voice trailed off as he looked at Julie, eyes wide in shock. "We used to... we... my mom..." he repeated, struggling to finish the sentence, wanting the words to come back but... there was nothing there anymore. Desperately he searched for any glimmer, any fragment of a memory of his mom, but his mind stayed frustratingly blank.

Julie's mouth fell open. "R..." she whispered, "are you... remembering?"

He stared at her, and shook his head slowly. "I don't know, it just came out. I don't... remember anything else about her." He frowned, suddenly very sad.

Julie reached out and squeezed his hand. "But you remember she had a great laugh. That's enough." Her eyes, wet with emotion, caught his and she nodded to reassure him, "It'll come."

"What's that?" came Stephen's voice from the doorway, as he walked in with another tray. He was followed by another man in green scrubs, who stopped when he saw R, and took Stephen's arm.

"He really shouldn't be up," the man in scrubs said. Stephen nodded, shrugged and continued to R's bedside.

"R, this is Dan. He basically saved your life," Stephen said, as he lay the tray on a side table. R wondered briefly if he'd brought in another apple until Stephen lifted the cloth, uncovering a bunch of metal instruments.

R turned away, curious and concerned, and looked at Dan. The man was watching him closely, obviously fascinated.

"Thank you for saving me," R said, and wondered if he should be doing something more human, like trying to shake the man's hand. He tried it, reaching out towards Dan. The man stared at him, down at his hand, then jumped slightly, "Oh! Sorry, you're welcome. It's sort of my job," he said, shaking it gently.

"And you really shouldn't be up," he added, then turned to Stephen, "How is he up? Wasn't he sedated?"

Stephen just shook his head and shrugged again. "I started reducing the ECMO support this morning."

"And you removed the ventilator? Already?"

"No, he did that, after he woke up," Stephen replied, adding to R, "rather dramatically."

Dan rubbed his face vigorously, then shifted over to Julie's side. "Do you mind if we?"

Julie shook her head, released R's hand and slipped off her bed. Together they shifted it away.

The doctor returned to his side, pulling a pen light out of his pocket.

"Hmm," Dan said, flicking the light back and forth over R's eyes. "Mmm hmm."

R frowned. Was that good or bad? He couldn't tell. Idly he wondered what his eyes actually looked like. The last time he'd seen them had been in the mirror at Julie's place. Strange and stark. So much of him had changed since then...

Dan moved to the bandages on his chest, after adjusting the intravenous drip by his side. Carefully he peeled away at one side of the gauze, then stopped and frowned.

R looked down as the doctor pressed lightly at the area.  _Huh._  That didn't look that bad actually. The gunshot wound Julie's father had made was neatly sewn up and healthily pink.

"Oh R..." Julie said softly, her face falling.

He shook his head, trying to reassure her. "It doesn't hurt."

"It  _should_  hurt," Dan said, and straightened up to address Stephen, "Have you seen this?"

Stephen peeked over and raised an eyebrow. "Interesting. What about the cardiac wound?"

R frowned.  _Cardiac wound?_

Dan peeled back the center bandage and they all stared at the inch and a half slit, puckered with black stitches, centered over his heart. Like the other wound, it was lightly pink with scar tissue.

 _Oh, that wound. Wow._  He remembered seeing it in the shower, seeping the dark fluid of the dead. It'd made him smile at the time, because it reminded him of when he first met Julie.

Grinning with the memory now, he looked over at her, and saw her eyes fill with tears. She met his gaze and tried to wipe them away as they fell.

"I'm so sorry," she mumbled.

He smiled at her, and gave a sheepish shrug, "It's okay. It's... my favorite scar."

Julie's eyes brightened somewhat and she shook her head at his shrug. "You're impossible."

Stephen snorted, "That's putting it lightly." He pressed near the slit and looked up at R. "Rate the intensity of pain of that from 1 to 10, 10 being extreme pain."

"Zero," R answered. He didn't much like being poked and prodded like a science experiment.

"Amazing." Dan straightened and shook his head after checking the last wound. "This is absolutely not normal."

"Dan, you're driving me nuts," Stephen sighed. "He was a CORPSE. You can't get much more abnormal than a dead person coming back to life!"

"Thanks," R muttered.

Julie grinned. "He's remembering things too," she said.

"Really?" Stephen replied. "Interesting." He turned to R, "Do you remember how you died?"

Something in R's mind clicked, and a jumble of images flittered by. A bus. A nurse with strange eyes that spoke to him. A gunshot, a soldier aiming, a face against the stars. Glass shattering. Music. Strong arms. A beating heart.

A hand closed softly on his own, and he blinked. The images dissolved.

"Are you okay?" Julie asked, "You went away there for a bit."

R nodded slowly, thinking about what he'd seen. A face against the stars. Strong arms. The nurse. What had she been trying to tell him? It eluded him.

"It's just images, nothing coherent," he said.

Stephen nodded. "Well, we know how you got infected at least."

"You do?" R and Julie said in unison.

He nodded again and pulled the sheet away from R's left leg. A square of gauze was taped around his ankle, and mottled with dark patches.

Stephen carefully lifted the bandage up. Julie gasped.

"Oh my god," she said, leaning over the wound. "Why does it look like that? Why hasn't it healed?"

R stared at the wound, a semi-circle of black, jagged punctures over his ankle, and his mind jittered sideways.

The room around him  _changed_ , and he found himself propped up on his elbows against a shattered bus window, surrounded by glass, staring into the eyes of the dead nurse. She was holding his leg. Beyond her lay the corpse of a man, his throat torn open, the top of his skull a pulped mess.

_What the... how'd I get here? Another memory?_

The nurse stared at him, her mouth smeared with blood. R stared back, fascinated by the intelligence he saw in those eyes. She reminded him of himself, curious, questioning, seeking. Or was it more, that he was like her?

"Why didn't you kill me? You just bit me and let me go - why?" he found himself asking, not understanding what was happening at all, but knowing that this was an important question.

When she spoke through teeth red with gore her voice was like claws scratching over stone, "You were different."

"Different?" he asked, confused. "What do you mean?"

"You saw me," she answered simply.

"You were hard to miss!"

She shook her head, the motion slow and eerie. "No. You saw  _me_." As she said this, her face changed. Her sunken features filled out, the grey mottled skin warming to a light tan, the blood vanishing from her lips. Her hair, matted and dull, turned a richer black. The searing eyes changed last, from stark silver to golden brown.

He watched the transformation, dumbfounded. In front of him sat a perfectly normal human woman, in maybe her mid-thirties. Her scrubs were no longer caked with black gore and she stared at him with bright eyes.

"You saw through the death," she said, her voice now light and warm, "that I wasn't just a corpse. That there was something underneath."

R remembered that moment then, just before she bit him, that connection they'd had. Was it like the connection he had with Julie? She had seen something in him that nobody else believed in. The big difference was, he hadn't bitten Julie.

"But why bite me?!" he asked, confused and frustrated.

"I liked you. I wanted to keep you."

Exasperated, he threw up his hands, "Then why let me go?"

"They would have killed me," she answered, her voice fracturing as the grey started to spread across her skin again, darkening her lips, swallowing her eye sockets. "Besides," she added with a sharp tilt of her head, the motion sending a chill down his spine, "I knew you'd come back to me."

He swallowed, and tried to shift away from her, but there was nowhere to go, and she still had his leg. "I didn't come back to you though," he said, and tried to will himself to snap out of this dream, or whatever it was.

The woman's face continue to wither, the skin tightening over her skull like an ill-fitting mask. When she spoke, it was no longer just her voice, but layered with something else, "You're here now."

A trickle of unease threaded through his gut. Something was terribly wrong. This wasn't just his mind working on a memory. This was something deeper, something very dark. He needed to wake up, now. Where was Julie? She could bring him back, she just had to hold his hand.

"Julie can't reach you here, corpse," the terrible voice said, as the figure in front of him mummified into a blackened skeleton, flesh and muscle taut and atrophied.

 _Jesus!_  She'd turned into a freaking boney! He kicked out, but the creature held him firm. Panicking, he shut his eyes, trying to force himself to wake.  _This isn't real, this isn't real, wake up!_

"Real enough... corpse," the thing rasped, thrusting it's head towards him.

"I'm not a CORPSE!" he roared, and lashed out, punching the thing square in the face. The creature's head whipped backwards, then cracked back into place.

A dry, rustling sound echoed out of the boney's throat. Laughter. R's heart started to pound in his chest.  _Julie? Where are you? Stephen? Dan?_  They needed to bring him out of this!

With a triumphant screech, the creature sank it's jaws deep into his ankle.

The bite lit his body in cold agony. He screamed in pain and bucked, trying desperately to free himself, but the thing remained fastened on his leg.

_Oh god it hurts why why why is this happening again why is... where is..._

The thing dropped his leg and turned to him, the head tilting slowly. "You played at... being human, corpse. Time... to come back."

"N-no..." R stuttered, shaking his head as he sank to the ground, the cold already claiming his limbs. This wasn't how it happened last time, it wasn't this quick! Why was this happening? He couldn't let it, he wouldn't be that thing again!

The mummified skeleton crawled over him, until it's eyeless face hovered inches from his own. "Did you like the dream... I gave you? It... was good, wasn't it. Julie was so...  _sweet_."

R gasped as the chill coursed through his limbs and into his chest, numbing the muscles that gave him breath. Struggling against the closing wall of ice, he looked into the dead thing's empty eye sockets, rage burning in his heart, "S-screw... you!" he snarled.

The creature sighed, the sound like an ancient tomb opening, and it raised a skeletal hand to R's chest.

"Die," it hissed, and pressed a bony finger down against his heart.

R jerked as the muscle clenched in his chest, then stopped. "N..no..." he gasped, and stared defiantly at the leering face of the skeleton, "not... real..."

"No?" The thing laughed again, and everything around him changed, the shattered windows and twisted metal dissolving into the machines and wires and tubes of the ICU, the skeletal face fading, morphing into Julie's.

R looked up at her face and tried to smile.  _Thank god... not real..._

The sound hit him next, a piercing wail from one of the machines, and Julie's voice, screaming his name. She was terrified, her eyes wide, rimmed in red, and she was shaking him, telling him to breathe, to fight!

Frowning, he looked into her beautiful blue eyes, and tried to speak, but he couldn't gather any air. His heart was a frozen ball of ice in his chest, unmoving, and he couldn't feel his limbs anymore.

 _No! No! Not again!_  He struggled to breathe, to hold on to the precious life he'd reclaimed, but the world started to shrink away from him as the darkness dragged him under.

Julie's face was crying far above him, he reached for her, desperate to connect, desperate for her touch, for her life.

_Julie..._

R sank beyond her reach as the absence of all swallowed him whole.

* * *

_Thanks for reading everyone. This is one of my favorite chapters of the book, as I loved R's enjoyment of little human things. Closeness with Julie, munching on an apple*, laughing and memories, no matter how fragmented._

_And then of course, very bad things happened. Again. But there's a point. Stick with me ;)_

_Thanks again for reading. ;)_

_(*I like to think the apple was a Honey Crisp. Dear lord, those are amazing. It's like eating sunshine.)_


	21. The Failed Experiment

Julie stared at R's wound, horrified. It looked... fresh. It looked like he'd just been bitten.  _What the hell? It's still oozing that dead crap!_

She looked up from the wound at Stephen, "Why does it look like that? Why hasn't it healed?"

Stephen shrugged, "I don't know. I really don't. It's like the infection hasn't left him yet."

His words made her skin flush in fear.  _Still infected? But he's alive? They'd beaten it, he was..._

R's leg jerked suddenly, and they all jumped. She'd thought he'd done that on purpose, and grinned his way, but the smile fell from her face.

He was pressed back against the bed, his whole body taut, his face twisted in fear. Eyes wide open, he stared beyond them all.

"R?" she said, and grasped his hand, squeezing it gently. The last time she'd done that he'd snapped out of whatever he'd fallen into. His palms were sweaty, and the monitor besides the bed started a rapid beeping.

R closed his eyes, shaking his head frantically against the pillow, and squeezed her hand  _hard_.

"What the hell," Dan muttered and ran over the monitor, checking R's wrist at the same time. "His heart's going nuts. Something's got him really worked up."

R roared and lunged forward, swinging his fist directly into Dan's face. The impact was shockingly loud in the large room and the doctor dropped like a stone.

"Jesus!" Stephen cried, and rushed to Dan's side as he slid bonelessly from the bed to the floor.

"R! R! You have to wake up!" Julie screamed, shaking his arm. It had no effect. "Stephen, what do we do?!"

"I don't know!" he yelled back, pulling Dan clear of the bed. The doctor was still out. "You're the key - wake him up!"

Julie looked back at R. His face was twisted in terror, and suddenly he screamed, his whole body arcing off the bed.

"Holy shit! R! WAKE UP!" she cried, staring into his eyes, holding his face, desperate to connect to him, to bring him back. It was tearing her up inside to see him like this - she'd never seen him so scared, in so much pain!

He grunted, and his leg jerked again. She glanced down at it and her face fell in horror.

The wound. The infection. It was growing. As she watched, the skin around the wound paled. Thin blue lines branched from the bite, and threaded up his leg, drawing the life from the limb, leaving behind the bloodless grey flesh of a corpse.

"Oh god, no nonono! R! NO!" she screamed back at him, tears streaming from her eyes.  _This couldn't be happening!_  "Help!" she cried over her shoulder, trying to bring Stephen. They had to stop this!

R gasped, and his chest heaved as if he was fighting for breath. His face twisted in such rage that Julie flinched back from him, was he going to lash out again? What was he fighting? What was happening?

"S-screw you..." he snarled, staring not at her, but through her, and suddenly she knew. He was facing off against something in there, something that was controlling the infection. Something trying to pull him back from life.

"No! R, you have to fight it! Please!" she sobbed at him, cradling his face. Why wasn't he breathing? He wasn't breathing! She looked at his chest, and gasped as the skin paled, traced by those horrific lines.

His whole body jerked again and his eyes opened wide. At that moment the monitor beside the bed gave two quick stuttered beeps, then started a continuous tone.

"NO! R! You have to fight! BREATHE!" she shook him violently, and he blinked, and suddenly he was there again, staring up at her, truly seeing her, his lips opening as if to speak.

But he couldn't speak. He wasn't breathing. His heart had stopped. The grey death was creeping up his neck, those freakish veins leading the way.

"R, breathe, breathe, you have to fight this..." she pleaded with him, her eyes blurring with tears.

He stared into her eyes, his brow dipping in anguish for a moment as his body stilled, and then...

He was  _gone_.

Julie blinked, stunned.  _No. No, this wasn't... He... he couldn't..._

"NO!" she screamed at him, shaking him, "No! You WAKE UP!" She searched his face desperately. His eyes were empty, lifeless.

As she watched, his skin sallowed, the healthy flush draining to grey. His lips darkened and cracked, drawing back from his teeth. Finally, the skin around his eyes sank in, dark with bruising, and his beautiful blue eyes, those eyes she'd fallen into, drained of color till only a dull grey remained.

He was dead again.  _How?_  They'd been laughing together just a few moments ago...  _why..._

She had to save him. She had to bring him back. She could do it, she'd done it before. As the tears fell from her eyes, trailing down her jaw, Julie pulled closer to his face. She was going to kiss him. She was going to kiss him and he was going to wake up and come back.

Those dead, empty eyes swiveled sharply and locked onto hers.

Her breath caught in her throat, and skin crawling, she remembered the first time they'd been this close. After she'd stabbed him and he'd crouched down before her and struggled to say her name. She'd look into those same eyes, but she'd felt him in there, felt this curious, yearning soul looking out from within that dead body.

Whatever was looking at her now, wasn't R. The eyes were empty and cold and focused with predatory intent on her.

The skin at the back of her neck prickled.  _Get the hell away from him!_

She jerked backwards, trying to get some distance between herself and the thing that was not R, but the corpse's arm snaked out and a cold hand latched onto her forearm. With a startled cry, she tried to wrench herself free, but his grip only tightened.

The corpse that wore R's face turned towards her, opened its mouth and gave a strangled rasp.

 _Oh god._  "R... you have to be in there. Please, please fight this and come back to me."

"Julie, I'm sorry. I think he's too far gone." It was Stephen, somewhere behind her to the left.

"No," she cried, then whimpered as R's grip tightened again.

"You're in serious danger girl, I have to do something."

"No, please... just..." she could do this, she knew she could. She focused on R's dead eyes. "It's Julie, R, it's me. I know you're in there. I  _know_  you are."

R's face remained expressionless, and he leaned towards her, slowly sitting up.

"He wouldn't feel anything Julie, it would be quick," Stephen said softly, and he appeared then, behind R's bed. He'd grabbed one of the long scalpels from the tray by R's bed, and was holding it out in his hand.

"Don't you freaking touch him," she growled. "Don't you dare!"

R groaned at her, and drew her arm closer. Fear gripped her as she saw his nostrils flaring.  _He's smelling me, like any dead would. Dear god R, where are you?_

"The experiment failed Julie, I'm so sorry."

With that, Stephen shot the scalpel forward, behind R, aiming the deadly tip at the base of his skull.

"R!" she screamed, but the corpse had already turned, and lashed out at Stephen, catching him against the side of the face, driving his head down hard against one of the machines. The man crumpled without a sound and fell lifelessly beneath the bed.

 _Oh god!_  "R! R, you have to stop! Please!" she cried, as he turned back to her, trying to twist off the bed. Something stopped him, and he looked down at the tubes that snaked under the sheet. No longer pulsing with red blood, the tubes were black, choked with infection.

He closed a grey hand around the tubes and wrenched them out, sending a spray of dark fluid across the white sheets. Reaching up, he did the same thing with the shunt at his neck, tearing free the long thin needles embedded there, leaving a jagged gash.

Then he stood, the sheet falling from him, new wounds at his neck and thigh oozing that horrible dark fluid. His head hung low as he looked back to her, his pale grey eyes fixing on her own through the dark strands of his hair, and gave a low gurgled moan.

Julie's heart thundered in her chest. "R. You have to remember who you were," she said, her voice as even as she could make it though she felt like screaming. "Remember us, R. Remember m- _NO!_ "

He'd dived towards her face suddenly, his jaws snapping the air as she jerked away, desperately trying to pull herself free. His grip remained absolute, and he wrenched her arm back, staggering in towards her with the momentum.

As his face closed in, Julie reached out and rested her hand against the cold skin of his cheek, crying as she made a last desperate attempt to reach the man she loved. She couldn't give up on him. Wouldn't. Even if it meant she'd die here. They had to fight this, and he needed her help.

At her touch, he stilled, and the grey eyes turned towards her hand.

"Look at me, R," she whispered, and stroked her thumb along his cheekbone.

Those empty eyes turned back to her, and there was the tiniest flicker of confusion across his brow.

Her heart lit up with hope. He  _was_  in there! She could do this! She searched his eyes desperately and cradled his jaw. "Please come back to me R.  _I love you."_

The air vanished from her lungs as something happened to R's face. Something  _dark_  took hold of him, something that pulled the skin taut across his skull, something that hollowed out the sockets of his eyes, leaving nothing but two black pits.

The horrific face above her twisted, exposing blackened teeth, and it spoke. The sound was like the earth splitting open. " **You can't... have... him. Mine... They are all... mine...** "

Julie screamed, absolutely terrified by the thing before her, and lashed out, punching it in the side of the head, kicking against it to get free. That wasn't R, whatever it was, it wasn't R!

A grey hand snaked out and closed around her neck, and the thing lifted her clear off the floor. She kicked wildly at him, and grabbed his arm, desperate for some leverage to pull herself free, but his grip tightened and she found herself gasping for breath.

Then they were moving, as he took jerky strides forward and suddenly slammed her forcefully into a wall. Stars swam across her vision and her head exploded in pain. The room seemed to blink out for a moment, and she realized she was running out of fight, she had to do something fast, or this goddamn thing would win. It was going to kill her, get R killed, and keep taking over the freaking world.

 _No._ Stuffing the pain down, she gripped R's wrist, pushing back against the wall to ease his grip on her throat and glared into those empty eye sockets as the creature's face came in for the kill.

If he couldn't remember her, if this thing was blocking R from remembering her, maybe she could reach him with someone else.

"Remember your mom, R?" she said, struggling to gather breath, "Remember her laugh? She had the best laugh. Remember what you used to do?" Something warm and salty ran down into her mouth as she spoke.

R froze.

The voice of rending stone came again from his throat. " **Stop...** "

"She loved you R, do you remember how much she loved you? You'd crack jokes and she'd laugh, and it was wonderful. You remember that, I know you do." Tears spilled from her eyes, because she knew this was true, just knew it. She released his wrist and reached again to his cheek, stroking the dry twisted skin.

" **S..st** op..." the thing in R said again, but it's voice was breaking apart, and she could feel his skin changing under her touch.

"No," she growled at it, her heart growing bold, "You're done. This world has no use for you anymore. Time to crawl back to wherever the hell you came from."

The thing snarled, even as R's skin started to fill out, and she could almost see his eyes deep in the dark holes. The grip against her throat tightened, cutting off her air.

 _Screw this._  She sought R's eyes in the midst of those bottomless black pools, and her heart swelled with everything she had ever felt for him, for her dad, her mom, for Perry, for anyone who had ever been important to her. Love, pure and powerful, filled every cell of her body and she imagined reaching down to him with it, striping away the darkness and pulling him free.

"I love you R," she gasped out.

And then she smiled, because she knew everything was going to be okay.

R was looking out at her again.


	22. Changing Everything

The darkness had hollowed him out once more, leaving behind something empty and desperately hungry for life.

It had the girl. It had crushed the one who attacked it, and freed itself from the machines.

The girl kept talking to it, but the words had no meaning. It wanted to take the life she had,  _needed to_ , but she kept fighting.

Then she touched its face. And her touch... her touch started to mean something. What did it mean?

She spoke again and her words...

_Jul...ie?_

**_Enough._ **

The darkness enveloped him again and he saw nothing, felt nothing, was nothing.

Until someone laughed. A beautiful, cascading melodic sound that echoed all around him in the dark. A laugh that drew missing pieces of himself from the darkness like a magnet, a laugh that started to rebuild him again from nothing.

A laugh he knew.

_Mom?_

With that one word, everything that had been stripped from him returned, and he knew what he was, who he was, and knew what had been done to him.

And he started to fight. He started to feel, every emotion he'd ever felt, he drew it to himself and struck back at the dark nothing around him, until he could see light.

 _Julie._  She was there, she was reaching for him, and she was all light, and he held her hand, and pulled himself up out of the darkness.

He blinked.

And saw... her. Against a wall? She was hurt, blood trickling from her nose...

_What...? No! Someone... choking her!_

With horror, he realized the hand holding her by the throat was  _his_. He jerked back, stumbling away, not believing, not understanding, and Julie dropped to her feet with a sharp gasp, then crumpled to the floor.

 _Julie!_  A terrible moan came from somewhere around him, and he realized the sound was coming from his own throat. Then he was reaching out for her, and he stopped, frozen by the sight of his arm... his hand...

Bloodless and grey. Cold.

_Dead. I'm dead again. And I almost killed Julie._

No... that  _thing_  had almost killed Julie. The darkness that had entered him through the wound in his leg.

"G-get... o-out," he whispered thickly, struggling with words again, struggling against a dead body, a still throat, to speak.

A fire stirred in his heart, and he felt a warmth spread over his chest, the first tremor of movement, of life.

"Get... o-out... of... ME!" he growled, his voice growing stronger as he took in a breath, fueling the rage.

"GET OUT!" he roared, and in that instant his heart pounded back into life, his lungs soaked up the air like a bellows, and the fire spread through his body, speeding with every pulse, pushing back the grey, withering web of infection. His leg and neck started to hurt, but it was good to feel again, and as he watched, the dark ring of punctures on his ankle spewed the last bit of the poison that had stolen his life, and turned pink.

Astounded, he stared at his hands, now vividly flushed with life.

"I knew you'd... come back," came Julie's soft voice.

She'd propped herself up against the wall and was smiling at him. Ugly red bruises marked her neck where he'd almost strangled her. The sight made his heart clench, and a sob bloomed painfully in his chest.

"Julie... I hurt you," he said in a broken voice, and fell to his knees in front of her. He reached out, but froze as the image of his hand at her throat flashed in his mind.

"You didn't R. It was that thing," she answered, and she took his hand, bringing it to her face, leaning into it with a smile as her eyes closed. "Warm again. Alive again."

Her touch passed through him like a song, and he leaned in and kissed her gently, thankful to be back, thankful to be with her. She opened her eyes, gave him a brilliant smile, then looked down.

"And naked," she added, her grin getting wider.

"Wha.." he glanced down and immediately blushed, quickly covering himself with his hand. "Oh god..." he whispered and looked back up at her, red with embarrassment.

Julie's eyes fluttered closed and her head dipped forward briefly.

"Julie?" he asked, dread twisting within him. Something was very wrong.

She stirred at his voice, and looked up at him. "I'm okay, R, really," she murmured, but her words slurred. As she turned her head slightly, he saw a line of red against the wall. Fear thrummed within him as he quickly reached for the back of her head. As he pressed there gently Julie sucked in a sharp breath, then gave him a small smile and squeezed his hand.

"Don't... blame yourself," she said quietly, looking intently at him, "Not your fault."

Pulling his hand away, he made a strangled sound. It was wet with her blood. He'd been holding her against the wall when he came to. Had he hit her against it?  _Holy shit._  He wanted to scream. He wanted that goddamn skeleton in front of him again so he could rip it apart and shatter its bones. Rage filled him, making him shake, and he had to take a deep breath to steady himself.

_No time for that. Focus on what's important, getting help for Julie.  
_

Gently, he scooped Julie up off the floor and pulled her close, resting his chin against her forehead as he rose and walked back to his bed. Laying her down on the thin mattress, he brushed her hair from her face and scanned the room.

She needed a doctor,  _right now_. Where the hell were they?

"Julie, where's Stephen and Dan?" he asked, turning back to her. They'd been here, both of them, before he...

Julie shot up from the bed, then groaned, holding her head. "Oh god R! Stephen's under here, you have to help him!" She leaned over the side of the bed, and he followed her gaze. Stephen was lying motionless on his side, on the ground next to one of the machines. A small pool of blood lay under his head.

 _Oh god. Oh no._  He'd done that. He remembered it now, lashing out at someone behind him, someone who was going to hurt him.

His heart plummeting, R ran to the other side of the bed, frantically pushing away the machines as he knelt down and pressed his fingers against the man's neck.  _God, please don't be dead... I can't take it..._

A faint, but steady pulse beat beneath this fingers.  _Oh thank you..._

"He's okay Julie, I've got him."

 _Jesus._  An ugly deep gash lay across Stephen's forehead, bleeding profusely, and blood covered his face. Guilt tore through R. This man had helped to save his life, and he'd almost killed the guy.

What the hell was he supposed to do now? Julie needed help and the doctor was in worse shape than she was.

He glanced back up at Julie and his heart jumped in panic.

"Julie?"

She lay motionless in the bed, her hand hanging over the side.

"Julie?!" He rose, desperate to get back to her, but Stephen moaned beside him and started to stir. R quickly hooked his arm under the man's shoulder, and helped him as he tried to sit up.

Stephen crumpled forward, clutching his forehead with a groan. When he pulled his hand away it was covered in blood.

"S-shit..." Stephen mumbled, and slowly straightened again, taking in the room with a glazed look. When he saw who was holding him, he jerked back and threw a terribly aimed punch that glanced R's brow.

"Wait, it's okay! I'm not going to hurt you!" R yelled, flinching away as the doctor threw another wild punch.

"Stop it! I'm HUMAN!" R roared, and Stephen shrank back, blinking through the blood on his face until he focused on R.

His mouth fell open.

"S..hit..." he repeated, then his eyes rolled upwards, and he collapsed, sagging back against R.

"Dammit!" R snapped, and struggled to pick the man back up. How the hell was he going to help them now?

The door to the room exploded inwards, and a group of armed soldiers poured in, followed by Dan, nursing an ugly bruise on the side of his face.

"There he is! He's got Stephen!" the doctor yelled, pointing at R.

Weapons raised and cocked in unison. R stared down the barrels of six guns, all aimed directly at his head.

_Oh god!  
_

"I'm human, I'm not dead, don't shoot!" he cried desperately, his heart thundering.  _Please, not after everything that's happened!_

Dan hesitated for a moment, then reached out over the array of rifles and handguns. "Wait..." he said, staring intently at R.

"Please... they need help," R continued, still holding Stephen up, and nodding to Julie. Blood was starting to spread on the pillow under her head. Frantic, he looked back at Dan, "Please help her!"

"Julie?!" roared a voice from the doorway.

_Oh SHIT._

The Colonel rushed in, pushing past the row of soldiers to his daughter's side.

R's pulse raced. If anyone was going to shoot him right now, it was going to be that man.

_Goddammit._

He watched the Colonel, his nerves raw, and caught another figure entering the room out of the corner of his eye. A figure who walked with a certain gait he knew all too well.

"M!" he cried as he turned to watch him enter, grinning despite all the guns trained on his head, delighted to see his friend.

The corpse made his way through the gap the Colonel had opened up, and started to walk towards R. Instantly the soldiers shifted their focus to him, the only actual walking dead person in the room.

"M, stop!" R cried, the smile falling from his face as fear for his friend overwhelmed him. "Don't move!"

M stopped, and stared at R, his grey mouth opening in wonder. "R...?," he whispered.

"Dan, get your ass over here and help my daughter!" the Colonel roared, pulling a hand back from Julie's head. It was spotted in blood.

R wanted to get back to her, to help, but he didn't dare move. He didn't trust the soldiers or the Colonel not to shoot him, or his friend, no matter what Dan said.

Stephen moaned as he started to come to and struggled to stand. The man looked up and blinked at R again, then slowly shook his head, wincing. "I almost killed you," he mumbled. "Can't... believe you did it... again."

"Yeah, well," R sighed back, "I almost killed you. I'm really sorry."

Stephen snorted, then groaned again. "Think I'm gunna be sick."

He had to get this guy to a bed.

"I'm going to move this man over there, okay?" he called out to the guards, pointing to the other bed in the room. They still had guns trained on M, and barely glanced his way. It was the only okay he was likely to get. Grabbing Stephen's arm, he hoisted it over his shoulder, and walked slowly from behind Julie's bed.

M watched them as they passed, smiling to his friend. "R... you're alive... you did it," he whispered.

R returned the smile, "Yeah."

M did something funny with his eye that R guessed was an attempted wink. "Buck naked too... all the... ladies... in the house... say-"

"M!" R snapped back, and promptly flushed bright red.

M gave a rasping chuckle.

They finally reached the other bed, and he helped Stephen climb onto it. The doctor stared at him cautiously as he relaxed back against the mattress.

"You going... to change again?" he asked.

R shook his head emphatically. "No. The infection's gone."

"How do y-" Stephen started to say, but a roar exploded from behind R, cutting him off.

"YOU!"

 _Oh shit._  R spun around, just in time for Julie's dad to grab him by the shoulders and throw him violently against the wall. He hit  _hard_  and fell to the ground and the room spun crazily for a moment. He'd barely gathered himself before the enraged man thrust a gun into his face.

The Colonel was shaking, and R watched the barrel dance inches from his left eye.

"R?" Came M's voice from behind the Colonel.

"Don't... don't do anything M," R said, as calmly as he could, and turned his eyes from the gun to the Colonel. The man's face was twisted in anger.

"Don't  _do_  anything?" the Colonel spat, his voice rising in disbelief, "I should do something to the both of you right now!" The gun pressed up against his temple hard, and R resisted the urge to close his eyes. He'd been here before with Julie's dad, and the only thing that'd stopped him from being shot last time was Nora. He had no such help here.

"Look what you did to my daughter!" the man growled in his face, pointing his hand at Julie. His eyes darted to Stephen in the next bed. "Look what you did to him!"

He jabbed the gun against R's temple again, "What is the point of you if you just keep changing back? I should damn well end you right now!"

_That's it._

R had heard enough. Too much had happened to him today, this week, in his crazy life he was just starting to remember. Not caring what the Colonel did, he pushed himself up off the floor and stood before the man, towering over him.

The Colonel's eyes narrowed as he watched him rise.

"Get that gun out of my face," R said quietly.

The man's eyes widened for a moment, then shuttered to slits, "Excuse me?"

"I said, get that gun OUT of my FACE!" R yelled, and all of the anger, the fear, the pain of the last few days flooded through him, and he started jabbing Julie's father in the chest, punctuating what came out next. "I KNOW what I did, and it rips me up inside, but I had no CONTROL over what just happened! I did not MEAN to do any of it! You have no IDEA what Julie means to me, or how much it kills me to see WHAT I DID. You have no IDEA what I have been through, no freaking CLUE what Julie and I had to fight today, and you have no GODDAMN idea what it means to be DEAD! To come back from that, and have life stolen from you AGAIN!"

The Colonel stared at him, his face disturbingly unreadable, his gun still leveled at R's head.

R's voice lowered, and he leaned into the gun. "I've died twice now, you think I'm scared of you? You want so badly to hurt me for hurting your daughter, you do what you have to. But you'll be destroying something that's helping to change the world."

R stopped. And blinked, amazed both at what had come out of his mouth, and how he had said it. No pauses, no stuttering, just grand strings of syllables rolling off his tongue with ease. It was... wonderful.

The Colonel continued to stare at him, and R began to seriously think he was going to shoot him anyway.

"Four times," came a voice from the other bed.

They both turned to the man lying there. Stephen raised a hand, holding up four fingers. "You died twice in the OR, technically speaking," he offered.

R and the Colonel turned to face each other again. R sensed that something dangerous had passed them by. That things might just be okay.

"Dan?" The Colonel finally said, not taking his eyes off of R.

"She's going to be okay as far as I can tell. Concussion probably, that's all, no fracture. I'm more worried about Stephen."

John Grigio nodded, and withdrew the gun from R's forehead, tucking it neatly back into the holster at his side.

He looked R in the eye.

R steeled himself for what was going to come next.

"Get some goddamn pants on," the Colonel muttered, and turned back to his daughter.

_Oh. My. God._

R's skin flared a final, brilliant scarlet and he closed his eyes, completely and utterly mortified.

M snickered.

* * *

_Thanks for reading everyone. :D Hope you enjoyed this chapter. Leave a comment if you can, as always, I love to hear what you think._

_R and Julie have done something remarkable here, and the world is dramatically changed because of it._

_Wonder what's around the corner now? ;)_


	23. Grasping At Straws

"He's not here Dad."

After a heavy sigh, Mark nodded. "I know son, I know."

For two weeks now, the news had spread through the settlement that the dead were coming back to life, and that the cure was something noone had expected.

Contact. A connection with the living.

They didn't come outright and say it, but eventually everyone knew what they really meant.

Love.

The news was greeted at first by complete disbelief and laughter, then by anger and fear as people realized that the military running the city were completely serious. Once people began to participate in the actual rehabilitation though, and the newly living started to appear on the streets, everything began to change.

The city slowly began to hope.

Colonel Grigio's plan had been put into effect - the dead were welcomed into the stadium, given a place to stay, and medical attention to address any injuries that could prove a problem once their hearts started beating again. The most essential part of the plan was time with the living. A constant stream of people visited the stadium, their sole purpose being to interact with the dead. Talking was fine, but laughing was better, and touch was encouraged - a handshake, a pat on an arm were standard fare. Some of the living took to their roles like a calling, and would spend the entire day hugging every corpse they could find. They took a lot of shit for this at first, as it was, frankly, weird as hell. But you couldn't deny they made the biggest difference.

Mark had been one of the doubters. One of the first to laugh. Laughter that quickly turned to anger. How dare these assholes tell him that all he'd needed to do back at the airport was hug his son better?  _Ridiculous bullshit._

Then he saw his first dead-turned-living earlier in the week. Helping out near the hospital. And he recognized her as one of the walking corpses from the airport, where his son had been since he'd died. It was an older African American woman who had always stood out to him when he'd been searching for his boy, because she had these incredible tattoos. Wings across her back and bible verses on her arms. Every time he saw her, it made him stupidly happy for reasons he didn't quite understand.

And now, she was here. And now, her eyes were brown, not grey. Her lips were full, not withered and smeared with dried gore. She stood straight, and when she saw him, she smiled.

That had struck him like an physical blow, and he'd actually staggered away, desperately trying to find somewhere quiet, somewhere away from people, because he just broke down. Completely and utterly.  _They were right._  The dead were coming back. His son... could come back.

_My son._

He hadn't seen his son the last time he'd been to the airport, and that was over three weeks ago. If the tattooed woman was here, that had to mean that others from the airport were here too. His son  _had_  to be here.

So he'd approached the military, and was aggravated to find that everyone was expected to go through an official screening process. Both he and Brandon. They apparently didn't let just anybody in to cuddle with zombies. You had to be stable enough to handle being surrounded by that many dead, and you couldn't be a borderline psychotic zombie hater fueled by vicious thoughts of revenge. That was the harder test to pass.

And now, here they were. They'd been in three days so far. The first day had been terrifying. So many dead in one large space sent every nerve he had into fits. It took everything he had not to run out the door. Brandon had fared a little better, though his eyes were sharp with fear, and he stayed glued to his father's side.

But it slowly became obvious how very different these dead were. Sure, they looked about the same, most stood about the same, milling about in short shuffling steps, and there was always someone groaning. But they didn't look at you like prey. They looked at you with curiosity, with something he finally realized was hope. Longing. Despite himself, he was drawn by it, and his initially superficial attempts to mingle when he was really there to look for his son became something more sincere. He was truly reaching out, truly caring. It started to change him too. His smiles weren't quite as shadowed, and once or twice he actually laughed. It was strange. And wonderful.

Each day they wandered the entire stadium looking for his son. And each day, despite his hope, the thought that maybe he'd been in a different section this day, maybe he'd been in a med tent that day, maybe he hadn't arrived with this lot, but would be in with the new bunch, he never saw him. He kept imagining that they'd turn the corner in a hallway where the old concessions used to be, and his son would be there. Standing, waiting for them. He tried to imagine what he son might look like now, but the image was always ruined by the grey sunken face from his dreams.

At the end of the third day, his heart was leaden. They finally asked a couple of the guards keeping watch on the crowd whether they had seen him, but the men just shook their heads blankly. They looked tired and on edge. He didn't push.

It was probably time to admit to himself that his son was really and truly dead. The most likely thing being that he'd been killed on a raid. The thought always brought with it a rapid cascade of horrifying scenarios, until he finally stopped, took a calming breath and focused on what was really going on.

"Maybe we should go back to the airport," Brandon said, glancing around the room with a shrug. "Maybe they missed him?"

Mark looked at Brandon, and didn't say anything for a little while. Ever since the night he'd said goodbye to his eldest, he'd tried to turn his back on that place. On the obsessive need to visit, to search, to watch. And even now, with the changes happening all around them, he'd still held back. Hesitant to hit that same nerve with his son.

"Are we just grasping at straws here?" he said in a fragile voice, staring at Brandon, his heart incredibly sad, and desperately needing hope.

Brandon gave him a small smirk, "Dad, the dead are coming back to life. I think it's time to grasp anything we can."

A small sob broke from Mark's throat as Brandon spoke. Embarrassed, he tried to apologize, but his son quickly gathered him up in a tight hug.

In the midst of hundreds of milling dead, father and son embraced, the older man crying openly against his son's shoulder.

Silently, the dead watched, and slowly, a hundred hearts started beating.


	24. Old Haunts

"This is going to be so weird," Julie said, as they stood at the door of his old home.

"It already is," R smirked, his hand resting on the door lever. He stared down at handle, making no effort to move it, and not really understanding why.

Julie squeezed his arm gently and smiled at him. "Come on," she said, reaching down. She rested her hand on his, and with him, slid the lever across.

The door to the 747 slowly opened, and out came a not so nice smell.

"Gyah," R said, his face twisting in disgust. "Why's it smell so bad?"

Julie raised an eyebrow at him, "Why's it smell so bad? This is exactly how it smelled the last time."

R looked back at her as he stepped inside, "Seriously? Why didn't you say something?"

Her eyes got wide and she slapped him on the arm, "Why didn't I say something?! You were dead! What were you going to do? Clean?" Julie laughed, then shrugged. "I got used to it after a while anyway."

"Barf," he said, and ducked away as she tried to slap him again.

It took a while for his eyes to adjust to the dim interior, and when they did, it was jarring. Uncomfortable. He found himself standing even straighter, holding his head higher, wanting to be as far from the stooped, shuffling version of himself that had last been here weeks ago. Agitated and nervous, he started flicking the rubber bands on his wrist.

Julie enclosed his hand with her own, understanding. R sighed deeply and let the bands go.

They were one of the carry overs of his old, perennial ensemble. After wearing the same red hoodie and jeans for eight years he found the transition to a casual button down and khakis incredibly easy. In fact, he was pretty sure he would have jumped into a full suit and tie if he'd been able to find one, desperate as he was to shed his old skin. It wouldn't have stuck though, as he'd quickly ditched the new khakis for jeans. Sometimes you couldn't argue with comfort.

He sighed again. Here he was, surrounded by the artifacts of a half-life. A strange collection of incredibly ordinary treasures. Objects he used to marvel at, literally stare at for days as his fractured mind tried to discern their deeper meaning.

Frustratingly, his mind was still a little fractured. He had memories of his family, of most of his life before his death, but they were sometimes out of order or skipped strangely, like his old records. Voices were unclear, garbled, though he could still bring up the sound of his mom's laugh whenever his mind turned that way. Worst of all, he couldn't remember names. He had faces, memories of his family and people he knew were friends smiling, frowning, sometimes yelling and laughing, but no names. Not even his own. It was incredibly aggravating. Even M had remembered his name was Marcus, and he wasn't even fully alive yet.

Probably because he couldn't get a date.

He picked up a wooden shoe stretcher from a nearby pile and turned it over in his hands before putting it back down. He remembered being fascinated by the thing, spending at least an hour or two, twisting it in his grey hands, turning the knobs and watching in wonder as the thing split apart then came together again.

Shaking his head at his old self, he wandered further into the plane. God, he really was a hoarder. This was almost embarrassing. He felt himself blush as Julie followed him, picking through the piles herself, letting out the occasional 'aww' and giggle.

There was a reason they were here, outside of revisiting the past. They'd both been on the road for a couple of weeks now, ever since getting out of the hospital. Working with M, and the Colonel to locate outlying bands of the dead in the city and outer suburbs, and guide them to the stadium.

They'd had a full convoy at first, with multiple armed vehicles, and every group of dead they encountered sent the whole operation into a manic frenzy. But, something was very different now. Most of the dead didn't react to them like zombies. Most seemed confused, almost all of them acting as if they were searching for something, but it wasn't for human flesh.

Brains were no longer on the menu.

Julie greatly enjoyed bringing this up with her dad, any chance she got. The word 'vegan' got bandied about a lot, and the exchanges always ended with the Colonel rolling his eyes and getting very quiet.

They'd even run into a couple of dug-in survivors, eking out an isolated living in the occasional suburban house, barricaded with other houses in a makeshift armored enclave. They were the ones they really had to worry about. Most ascribed to the shoot first, shoot later method of neighborhood watch. These people wanted nothing to do with the Colonel's plan, and the best approach was to take a wide berth. Those weren't the best days.

The path they'd taken went right past the old shelter he'd stayed at with his dad and brother before they'd headed out to the airport. He'd been shocked to see it in such a mess. The barricade had been torn down in a number of places, and it looked as if some of the soldiers they'd left behind never actually made it out - dessicated skeletons lay around an armored vehicle lying on its side just within the gate. It was sobering. They'd made it out just in time. Just in time for him to die, and lose his family, but still.

He'd run inside, before anyone actually gave him permission to do so, and made his way to their room, and their old lockers.

They were broken, open and empty. Someone had taken everything. Bizarrely, his brother's discarded towel still lay on the bed. Julie eventually came in and found him sitting there, staring down at the towel in his hand. She sat next to him and just rested her head on his shoulder, until he was ready to go. The towel came too.

He'd gone in to find his real treasures, and they were gone. There was really only one piece left, and that's why he was back at the airplane. It was a piece of his old life that had stayed with him ever since the change. Something he'd stared at for eight years, and not understood, but couldn't let go of. Something he'd always known was important, but couldn't express why.

The photo of his family.

The other stuff was mostly junk, though there were a few pieces they were going to bring back with them on this trip. His record player and rather impressive zombie record collection for one. A little bobble-headed dog he'd found in an abandoned car that he'd tapped almost every day for three years, a ritual he'd started to feel just a little more human. The old stereographs he and Julie had shared one afternoon. And finally, the piece that Julie had just picked up.

"You remember this?" she asked, turning it over in her hands and giving it a little shake.

He walked over and wrapped his arms around her. "I do," he said, and rested his head against hers. They both watched as the little flakes drifted slowly down over the couple in the snowglobe, meeting over a bridge holding hands.

Julie put it down gently, then turned in his arms, lacing her fingers over the back of his neck. Smiling up at him, she started to sway in his arms, and though they had no music playing, he joined her, lightly dancing around the cabin of the plane. Their smiles turned to grins, then laughter, and ended with a tender kiss that turned hungry.

Julie pulled away with a smile, her throat flushed, and pressed her hand against R's chest. "We have to get back, remember?"

He nodded down at her, his heart pulsing swiftly, his senses saturated with the feel and smell of her skin. Still nodding, he leaned in and kissed her again. It lingered and deepened quickly until they were both flushed and their breaths mingled in heavy, hot gasps.

As he traced a line of kisses down her neck, she groaned. "Dad'll send the army after us if we're not back soon..." she whispered, then gently nipped his ear lobe.

With a low moan, he sucked in the soft skin of her neck and bit her softly, and she arched against him, tangling her fingers in his hair.

They fell to the floor.

And into each other.


	25. Chasing Ghosts

Mark felt distinctly uncomfortable.

The airport was deserted. Not a walking corpse in sight. It was jarring, particularly considering the last time he'd been here, when he'd been running for his life after an aborted attempt to cross the tarmac. There'd been plenty of dead then, all of them very eager to get up close and personal, and he'd barely escaped with his life. To come back here now to utter silence and stillness was just... making his skin itch.

This was Brandon's first visit back to the airport since that night, and it was obviously sitting badly on him. His son walked by his side, his handgun up and swiveling, scanning every doorway, every barrier and possible cover. He was visibly shaking.

He finally rested his hand gently over his son's, and Brandon slowly lowered the gun.

"I don't think you have to worry Bran," he said, "I really don't think there's anybody left."

Brandon released a heavy sigh and nodded softly, but kept the gun ready. "He's not here, is he," he asked, though it was really more a statement of fact.

They'd walked through almost the entire airport. There were a lot of corpses, but they were the real kind, the ones that would never get up and move again. Most of them were those skeletal things that apparently raided the stadium a couple of weeks ago, just before the change. They were incredibly creepy, and walking anywhere near them raised every single hair on the back of his neck. One of them had actually twitched as they'd passed by, and his son had emptied an entire clip in the thing's head before Mark had grabbed him and calmed him down.

Why they looked like mummies when the rest of the corpses didn't, Mark never understood. But he guessed it didn't matter anymore. Things were changing now, and he had a feeling they were all on the way out.

As they'd moved through the airport, he'd checked every corpse they passed, dreading what he'd find. But so far, his son's real corpse wasn't there either.

There was only one other place he could think of.

"Time to check out the plane I think," Mark said, his eye on the 747 parked beyond the regular gates.

"The plane?" Brandon asked.

"Yeah," he said with a nod, pointing to it. "That one. He visited it a lot for some reason." The manic run across the tarmac had been an attempt to solve the mystery, but the dead had had other ideas. At least his son hadn't been around when that happened. Hadn't been one of the pursuing corpses. Because he wasn't too sure he would have kept running if he had been.

Brandon stared at it, then turned back to him, an eyebrow cocked, "Why would he visit a plane?"

"No idea," Mark answered, shrugging.

They reached the aircraft, and stood at the base of the metal stairs leading to the crew entrance, looking up at the windows.

"If he's up there, what'll we do?" Brandon asked, holding the gun ready at his side.

"Whatever we can," Mark answered, and tried to prepare himself. He really didn't think his son was walking around anymore. If he was in the plane, it was because it was his tomb.

He scaled the steps, trying to keep his footsteps as quiet as possible but failing, as the metal stairs rattled with the slightest movement.

Nothing moved through the windows.

_Don't let him be inside, I don't want to see the truly dead corpse of my son._

Taking a deep breath, Mark drew the lever across and pulled the door open. The smell hit them both immediately and they looked at each other.

_Dammit.  
_

Leading the way, he stepped inside the plane and his mouth fell open in shock.

"Oh my god," he whispered.

"What?" Brandon called from the stairway, "Is he there?"

He couldn't speak. He had no idea what to say. He just stared, astounded.

"Dad, what?" Brandon asked again, then stepped in after him.

"Holy shit," he said, and moved around his father, to walk down the leftmost aisle of the plane. "Dad, look at all of this stuff!" His son started picking up random objects from the piles stacked in the seats, against the wall, in the overhead compartment. "Is this all his?" he asked, holding up an old Gameboy. He replaced it on the stack and shook his head, his eyes taking in the whole plane. "This is so weird!"

Brandon kept talking as he roamed the aircraft, but Mark just stopped hearing him, his own thoughts crowding out everything else. Had his dead son really been gathering all these things? Why? What did a corpse need with stuff? He'd never heard of anything like it - no one had ever talked about the dead hoarding, collecting things. They walked around with the gear they had on when they died, that was it. They got busy with the killing, and that was it.

But that clearly wasn't it. Everyone was waking up to the fact that the dead weren't truly, completely mindless gone. That they could be brought back, as ridiculously as it seemed, by connection, by touch, by love.

Was that was his son was doing here? Trying to connect? To touch something human? To feel human?

It hurt. If he had only had a chance to see this, to have known this, years ago... Everything could have been so different. He might have made the connection himself, and reached out to his son.

He could have brought him back. Regret crushed him as his mind tumbled down the very familiar road of what ifs and maybes, and his heart fell to despair.

"Dad..." Brandon whispered. He was standing about half way down the plane, looking at something on an old food cart.

"What," Mark answered, his voice deflated.

"You have to see this."

Slowly he made his way to his boy, his eyes darting between the strange and mundane treasures around the plane. Books and magazines sat in uneven piles everywhere. He glanced at the spines of a few - school textbooks, cookbooks, mystery novels, sports biographies, randomly mixed together. A globe map stuffed in an overhead compartment, next to what looked like old vinyl records and a Mr. Potato Head. A mobile of the solar system dangling from the ceiling. A saxophone and xylophone in a box. A bunch of action figures in a tray. A bobble headed dog sitting on a seat headrest. He reached out and tapped the dog on the head as he passed.

"Look," Brandon said again as he came near.

Mark scanned the top of the cart. It was dominated by a record player, which sent his mind spinning - he tried to imagine the corpse of his son putting a record on. His mind flashed back to the night he'd changed, seeing his dead son with eyes closed listening to the iPod. Perhaps that had made a difference. Perhaps that connection to music had always made him a little different.

Next to the player was an etch-a-sketch, and a bunch of discarded bits and pieces - a domino, a lighter. Marbles. Brandon was holding the lid of a wooden box, carved roughly with some leaf design.

Mark looked inside and his breath caught in his throat.

It was the photo.

The missing photo, from the album he'd put together for his son - the one he'd gone back to the school for, on one of his side trips to the airport. Another ridiculously dangerous excursion, but one he felt compelled to make. He'd gathered all of their stuff, remembering his last fight with his son, determined to make good, even if belatedly.

When he'd opened the album, he'd been confused to see the empty pouch where the first photo had been. It had always been his favorite, and he knew it was his son's - a picture of all of them, his wife too, sitting around the table laughing at his brother's place. Good times. Great times.

He reached in and took it from the box. Feeling something on the back, he turned it over and saw dark crusted fingerprints in what could only be dried blood. A jarring reminder of what his son was. Turning it back, he focused on his son's face, and drew a thumb across his image. That beautiful smile. He definitely got that from his mother.

A tear fell down his face.

He'd always wondered since then if his eldest had taken the photo with him when they'd left. And now he knew.

"I remember that day," Brandon said beside him, then laughed out loud. "Mom got so pissed 'cause I kicked him in the nuts right after this was taken. I didn't mean to, we were just wrestling!"

Mark wiped his eyes and nodded at his son, his face slowly breaking into a smile. "God, I  _do_  remember that. She was angry at me too, cause I let you guys fight all the time. But it was just what brothers did." He started chuckling, the memory playing in his head. "He just fell right over, oh that was funny. I was laughing so hard, and your mom was ready to kill me!"

"I know!" Brandon said, unable to stop laughing.

Caught in the memory, he joined his son, the laughter bubbled from his chest with ease. It felt wonderful. It'd been so long since they'd had a good laugh together. Since before this whole mess really.  _God, it'd been too long._

The laughter slowly subsided and he wiped new tears from his face, smiling. "Good times."

"Yeah." Brandon nodded. But the smile slipped quickly from his face.

The sight made Mark's heart hurt. He grabbed his son in a hug, and held him tight. "Brandon... god... I'm sorry things have been so hard." He squeezed his boy close. "It's going to be different now, okay?"

Brandon squeezed him back. "Okay," he murmured, and buried his head in his dad's shoulder.

Mark held his son and nodded against him. "I love you son."

Brandon was quiet for a little moment, then released a long sigh. "Love you too Dad."

It struck Mark then, as his eyes swept the plane one last time. Everything he needed was right here, in his arms. There was no need to chase ghosts anymore. "C'mon," he said, and patted his son on the back. "Time to go home."

Brandon pulled away, quickly brushing a hand across his face. "What about...?" he asked, gesturing to all the stuff around them. At the brother who wasn't there.

"We've got him here," he said, and tucked the photo in the pocket of his shirt.

Brandon looked at him, a small smile reaching the corners of his mouth, and he nodded again. "Okay."

Giving Brandon a quick kiss on the forehead, he squeezed his shoulder and guided him to the door.

Father and son descended the steps in the golden light of the fading sun and headed for home.

* * *

_Okay, did anybody think they were about to pop in on Julie and R there?_

_They're actually visiting the airport about a week apart. While Mark and Brandon were rummaging around in R's plane, he was out traveling with Julie and the Colonel to gather up dead._

_This is a bit of a turning point for Brandon, though things had become a little better after Mark's goodbye to his eldest that night in their apartment. Mark has an epiphany of sorts and truly lets things go, and truly lets Brandon know how important he is to him._

_Not long to go now! We're back to Julie and R in the next chapter.  
_

__Thanks for reading, and if you've got a moment, leave a comment and let me know what you think!_ _

__PS: I think some folks thought that Mark and Brandon are basically walking out of my fanfic here, never to return. That's not the case. I'll leave it at that._ _


	26. Missing Pieces

Julie lay nestled in R's arms on the floor of the plane, his body pressed up against her back, his arm hugging her waist. It was heaven. Heaven on a slightly cold, hard floor, but still. Peaceful and perfect. A scratchy woolen airplane blanket covered them, and she rubbed it between her fingers, remembering the time R had covered her with one the night he'd first brought her here. God, she'd been so terrified. And he'd been so kind.

And now she was here, in his arms. Life was so strange. What would her other self had said if she knew this was going to happen? She couldn't imagine. All she'd wanted to do at the time was get the hell away from the creepy ass zombie.

A little laugh escaped her at the thought, and R stirred slightly.

Smiling, she kept still, wanting to hear him relax again, and fall back to sleep. She loved the sound of it, the deepening soft rhythm of his breathing. It was so peaceful.

When they were traveling with her dad, looking for stragglers, she'd watch him sleep sometimes, watch his eyes dance under his lids, his mouth fall open as he relaxed. They weren't sleeping together then, her dad wouldn't let them of course, they just lay on sleeping bags next to each other, and talked while everyone else drifted off. Then he'd finally fall asleep, and she'd watch over him. When she woke up, he was there, watching her with a soft smile.

A short burst of static interrupted her thoughts and she groaned. It was her com. The static sounded again, with a muffled voice. That had to be Dad.  _Dammit._

R shifted and made a small sound. His hand stirred against her belly, and she grinned, turning towards him.

"Hey," she said softly.

"Mmm," he mumbled, smiling at her as his eyes slowly blinked open. The static came again, and he frowned. "Whazat?"

"Dad," she said with a sigh. "We didn't check in you see, at the appointed time."

He nodded slightly, his eyes closing again as he smirked, "Right. You should tell him why."

"Oh no, I think I'll leave that to you," she said, and poked him with her elbow. The voice started yelling then, and she grumbled, sitting up and groping under the pile of their clothing to find the radio.

She clicked the switch, "Hey Dad, sorry!"

"Where the hell are you?!" her dad roared, the sound translating to a tinny squeak that almost made her giggle. "Are you two still in the plane? You were supposed to be back a half hour ago!"

"Yeah, um." She looked at R, gesturing for him to come up with something, but he just propped himself up on an elbow and shrugged. Rolling her eyes, she threw her bra at him.

"We wanted to make sure we got everything Dad, I'm sorry," she said finally, wincing.

"Well, hurry it up! The wall's coming down at eighteen hundred hours!"

"We'll be back before then Dad, I  _promise_ ," she answered, dropping her forehead on the radio.

"Okay. Be sure you are. Over and out."

R threw a lazy salute in the air and rolled over on his back, tucking his hands behind his head. "Your dad," he started.

"My dad," she agreed, and smiled down at him.

He turned his head to her. A little electric thrill passed through her as their eyes met and she grinned. How he could still do that, she didn't know. She didn't think that would ever change.

He sat up and his face was now an inch from hers. "I guess we should go then, huh?" he said, smiling, his gaze falling to her mouth.

"Yeah. We should." She leaned even closer to him, and as their lips met they kissed, slowly, gently, losing themselves in each other.

Finally, reality intruded and she pulled away, cocking her head to the side with a sigh. "We really should get going."

"Yeah," he smiled, nodding.

"Can I have my bra back?"

"The one you threw at me?"

"Yes."

"No."

"What?! Give me my bra back!"

"No."

"Okay, I'll steal your pants. And your underwear."

"Tough talk."

"Then you can go yell at my dad with everything hanging out again."

"Oh god... you had to bring that up," R groaned and handed over her bra.

Julie grinned and snapped it on. "I win."

"Only because you fight dirty," he grumbled, and stood up, hopping back into his pants.

She shrugged into her shirt and jacket and drew her hair out from the back. "It's true." Stepping into her skirt and boots, she looked around the plane again, at all of R's strange treasures. "You know, someday you're going to have to tell me the stories behind all of this stuff."

R stiffened slightly as he buttoned his shirt. He didn't say anything for a little while, then sighed. "Some of them don't come with nice stories."

Julie studied him. "No?"

"No," he answered, his face turning to shadow as he looked away.

"Okay," she said softly, not wanting to push. "So what's left then?"

"Just the photo," he said, and walked over to the cart that held the record player. She followed him. Next to the player was the small carved wooden box she'd seen the first time he'd brought her here. She'd actually never opened it. Something about it had seemed so absolutely  _private_  that it felt uncomfortable to even consider doing so. Which was bizarre in itself really, because he'd been a corpse at the time.

Julie wrapped her arm around the small of his back and squeezed him. She couldn't wait to see his family. R had just started talking about them when he got out of the hospital. While he still couldn't remember names, and the memories he had were sometimes garbled and incomplete, he remembered special moments with them and shared what he could. She was really eager to put faces to them all.

She was even more hopeful that they might be able to use the photo to  _find_  them. If they were still alive.

R didn't think they were, and she found that incredibly sad. He'd told her that it was okay, that he'd come to term with the idea. She didn't think that was okay at all, but after a while, she'd stopped arguing. Apparently whatever he'd seen before and after his death had been enough to convince him. The memories were a little fractured, and painful, so it was hard for him to share, but apparently his family had missed some kind of air evacuation, and were surrounded by dead when he'd turned. He didn't think there was any way they could have survived.

But he never saw them die, and that's what she held onto. There was still hope. And she'd hold onto it for both of them.

R lifted the lid of the box, and froze.

Julie peered around his arm.

The box was empty.

"But..." he whispered, then lifted the box, lifted the record player, and started shuffling everything on the cart, slowly at first then more and more frantically.

"Where the..." he muttered, and did the same thing all over again, then looked at the floor, under the cart, behind the cart.

 _Oh no._  Her heart sinking, Julie started to look herself, shuffling through some nearby piles. "Could you have moved it? Maybe not remembered where?"

R shook his head vigorously, "No, I always put it back in this box. Always. It was important to me, even if I didn't know why."

Julie nodded, searching some stacks and under the seats a little further away. Nothing.

"Dammit!" R yelled, and kicked the cart. A bunch of little odds and ends went flying, and the box fell to the ground, open and blatantly empty.

Julie came to him and squeezed his arm. "R, I'm so sorry."

"I just don't... why would someone take it? Of all these things, why take a photo? I don't understand." Leaning down, he picked the box back up and gently placed it on the cart, then stood for a moment, very quiet.

"Maybe one of the other dead took it?" she asked.

R shook his head, and when he answered his voice was flat. "None of them knew how to open the door."

He started tying up the wires on the back of the record player, his face dark with an inner storm, then moved to his records, stacking them in a big box he'd pulled from the back of the plane.

It was painful to see him so hurt, she couldn't stand it. "Hey," she said softly, and rested her hand on his arm.

"We need to hurry," he said under his breath, pulling away to grab the rest of his keepsakes.

She watched him, her heart aching, "R..."

With a sigh, he turned back to her, but wouldn't look her in the eye. "I'm sorry Julie, I'm just..."

"I know," she said, and gathered him in a hug. His arms wrapped around her and he squeezed her back, releasing another big sigh.

"C'mon, let's go," she said, smiling up at him. "We'll grab the rest of this stuff another day. Maybe we'll find the photo then."

Looking down at her, he nodded, his eyes sad.

"I might even let you drive back," she joked, turning to pick up the record player.

R threw the bobble-headed dog in the record box and hefted it. "Okay."

"Although, I don't know if you can be trusted with the convertible after the last time."

"Mmmhmm."

Julie sighed. "Okay, no more jokes."

R gave a half-hearted smile, "Sorry."

"It's okay." She bumped up against him. "Let's go home."

R took a last look around the plane, and his eyes fell on the empty wooden box.

"Yeah." Frowning deeply, he followed her out the door.

* * *

_The story is slowly wrapping up now. Can't wait to have it all up, it's very sweet at the end (well, I think so ;) There's some drama to come, but... well, I'll leave it at that.  
_

_And as always, leave a comment if you have the time, I appreciate your thoughts! (nom nom nom)_


	27. A Time for Miracles

Mark had to admit, he was excited about this. They'd all been staring at this damn wall, hell, he and his son had been helping to make it, for just over seven years. Sure, it kept the zombies out, but it also kept them stuck within, afraid to leave the safety of the city. They had most of what they needed inside, aside from some essentials they had to make regular salvage runs for, but it was still just a human zoo.

The time had finally come for it to fall. He'd been helping out with the planning, drawing on his construction and engineering backgrounds to assist in where to put the explosions, how to chain them together for a proper collapse, and backup plans in case anything went wrong. But nothing would, he knew it. It was overdue, their city was ready, the world was holding its breath for this.

Brandon was off helping his team set the explosives in their section. He had to wonder how it felt for his boy to destroy something he'd spent the last three years working on. He had a feeling it felt amazing really, because he wouldn't have to be stuck on a wall team from now on. Life was about to change for him. For everyone. Dramatically.

And they couldn't wait.

He jumped in the cab of the bulldozer, one of two assigned to clear the west entrance of rubble once they'd actually triggered the explosions. All of the buildings adjacent to the wall had been evacuated, and the military were about a half hour away from closing the gates. Things were definitely going to be a bit messy for a while.

There were a lot of people on the streets, most of them trying to get out of the city to watch the wall fall from the hillside west of town. He had to honk his way through a couple of big crowds as he drove the bulldozer to the rendezvous area. The sense of excitement was palpable, and almost everybody was wearing a big smile. It was good to see.

He knew there were still some folks who weren't behind the rehabilitation though, even as more and more newly living walked the streets these days, taking up small jobs to help out and earn their place here. They ate normal food, they needed rest and sleep just like anybody else, they smiled, they laughed, they cried. But there were some isolated groups of people who couldn't accept what was going on. Who just didn't trust it. And they were getting more aggressive. He'd heard rumors of an attack on one of the rehabilitated a few nights ago, some poor man had been beat up pretty badly, nobody knew who by.

Sure, he hadn't accepted it at first either. But all you had to do was spend time with one of them to know they were just people, after all, and that this was important work. Brandon had certainly embraced the idea, his son spent almost all of his free time at the stadium now, but Mark had a sneaking suspicion that was due to the girl he'd been working with. Sarah, his son had called her. Probably not her real name, but until her memories were back, that's what they were going with.

Brandon was trying to hide how important this girl was to him, but it was easy to see his boy was the happiest he'd been in years. Hearing his son laugh, seeing a genuine smile on his face more often than not - he'd got over the strangeness of the whole thing pretty quick. Apparently she was going to be released from the stadium today as she'd been making really good progress with Brandon's help. Hardly a surprise, they'd spent so much time together. They were planning on attending the big celebration being held in the markets all night, and they'd invited him.

Whether he was going to go or not, Mark hadn't decided. Ostensibly, it depended on how long the clearing took, but truthfully, he wasn't sure if he was up for a party. Today's big event kept turning his thoughts towards his eldest, despite his best efforts.

Honking at another group of stragglers, he shrugged off the melancholic cloud settling on him, and pulled into the site. The other bulldozer was already there, driven by a big bearded guy named Frank, who took up most of the cabin of his rig. Throwing a quick wave at the man, he settled in, arms crossed over the wheel. The wall stood a like the hull of a warship two hundred yards away, riveted panels of steel streaked with rust and the weathering of time.

An impenetrable barrier that had stood for seven long years against an enemy that was no longer their enemy.

Who had turned into a friend. A lover. Family.

It was definitely the time for miracles.


	28. Just R

The drive back to the city had been awkwardly quiet, which was rare for the two of them, but R couldn't help himself. The loss of the photo had hit him hard, and on a day when he should feel excited about this incredible thing that was happening, he was lost trying to sort through his memories, trying to solidify the people in them, trying to shore up the emotions he'd experienced during those times, trying to make them as real as the photo had been. Losing that physical piece of the past had made him desperate, fearful that if he let them slip by, his memories would go the same way. Sure, it was probably irrational, probably wasn't making anything better. But he couldn't stop.

So he sat, and chewed through his own mind, in an ironic nod to what he used to do as a corpse to feel more alive. But these memories wouldn't play with the same vividness he'd experienced when he'd consumed the living. They were oddly muted, garbled. Broken. It worried him.

_Am I ever going to be whole? Is it always going to be like this?_

"Dammit," Julie said suddenly, and he snapped back to himself. They were approaching a metal barricade set up a few hundred feet from the gate in the wall that stretched away for miles on either side of them, weaving through the gaps between the buildings of the city. An armed soldier walked up to the side of the car as it stopped.

"Gate's closed. You'll have to wait till we blow it and clear it now," the woman said, waving them back.

R looked down past the barricade to the wall. They were just starting to close the massive gate, and through the gap stood another barricade and some bulldozers, ready to clear the rubble after the thing was blown. He didn't envy those guys. They had a hell of a job in front of them.

Julie grabbed her com and clicked the button. "Hey Dad, come in."

There was a slight burst of static, and the Colonel responded, clearly unhappy. "You're not here Julie."

"Yeah, about that. We missed the gate." She glanced over at R, "We're going to the bridge to watch it from there, okay?"

A static filled sigh came over the radio. "Fine. Just be safe. And enjoy it, this is a once in a lifetime thing."

"Will do. Love you Dad, out."

"The bridge?" R asked, as Julie put the car in reverse and backed away from the barricade.

"Yeah, it's an amazing view," she said, smiling.

They turned off the interstate and took the road that wound up to the hillside just outside of the inner city. There were people gathered along the road, and a few more groups gathered at the top, ready for the big event. Parking the car behind an abandoned house at the top of the hill, they hiked back to a stone bridge overlooking the city. There were a few more people here, but they had most of the railing to themselves, and perched there together.

Julie was right, it was an amazing view. The day was turning golden around them as the sun dipped lower on the horizon, and the city spread out before them, glinting in the light. It felt like everything around them was holding its breath, waiting for this final barrier to fall.

Waiting for this wound to heal.

"R..." Julie asked, stirring him from his thoughts. He turned from the city to look at her.

"Yeah?"

"Do you remember your name yet?"

The question brought the frustration back, and the loss of the photo. He looked down at his dangling feet. "No."

"Well you know, you could just give yourself one," she said, and he could tell she was trying to make him feel better. "Just pick one, whatever you want."

Just pick one. Wasn't really that easy. And honestly, he wanted to hold on to the little bit of one he had left.

He looked back at her. "I like R."

She smiled then, and in the golden light of the sun it was radiant. "Really? You don't want to know what it was? You don't want your old life back?"

Of course he wanted to know what his name was, but there was no way he'd give up what he had with her, this wonderful life he'd rediscovered.  _No way._

"No, I want this one," he answered, being sure to catch her eye, let her know how important she was to him.

Julie rested her head against his shoulder and sighed, obviously happy with what he'd said. It felt good. He looked down at the deep slope beneath them spreading to the city beyond. What would their future hold now? Now that the wall was coming down? What was humanity's next step?

"Just R, huh?"

With his fragmented memories, with no photo to show of his life before, that's exactly what he was. He nodded, looking off beyond the city, his heart hopeful, but a little sad. "Just R."

A moment later, the first chain of explosions fired, sending the massive steel wall and towers cascading to the ground in a cloud of dust. The sight drew a gasp from the crowds down the hill, and the few groups around them, and then the cheering started, something he could actually hear coming from the city, once the rubble had settled.

Despite the lingering sadness, it was hard not to get caught up in the joy around him right now. Julie let out a loud whoop, throwing her arms in the air, and he couldn't help but laugh.

Turning to him, she hugged him fiercely, and tilted her face to his.

"R..." she whispered.

"Yeah?"

"We did this, didn't we." she said, and her voice, her eyes, held such awe. He could see fear there too, just a little.

It wasn't that he hadn't thought this, this incredible thought that somehow what they felt for each other, their connection, had stirred life back into the world. It very clearly had. But it was all so much bigger than him, so much bigger than either of them, it was... a little intimidating. When his mind wandered there, he tended to pull it back, in some small way fearful that if they poked and prodded this incredible gift too much, it'd all fall apart. They'd fall apart, and everything would go back to the way it was. Stupid fear again.

But really, he didn't feel it depended on them anymore, and that was probably the only thing that stopped him from curling into a little ball with the weight of what this all meant. They may have stirred something, but it was spreading now without them, and nothing could stop it - he knew that with absolute certainty.

And it was amazing.

"Yeah," he said finally, and sharing that awe, that little bit of fear with her, he held her close and looked out over a city that was finally, truly, coming back to life.

They stayed there for a long time, just holding each other, watching the sun set. Finally, she stirred against him with a small sigh.

"Want to head back?" she asked.

He nodded and smiled. "Sure."

He'd only been in the city for a night since the convoy had come back, as he'd been anxious to get out to the airport again and pick up his stuff. The only time he'd really spent in it was when he'd searched for Julie as a corpse trying to look as human as possible, when they'd run from Julie's dad when that failed, and the brief day he'd had out of the hospital, going through a bunch of donated clothing to find something to wear, and having only his second shower since coming back to life.

He'd been used to being on his own for a very long time, being surrounded by corpses who let out the occasional moan, but otherwise kept to themselves. Being surrounded by living people who wanted to interact and talk all the time was going to take some getting used to.

They headed back to the car, pulled out onto the hillside road, and headed towards the west gate. The night was getting thicker, the headlights picking up the occasional group on the road walking through the settling dust as they made their way in. Once they got to the gate it was obvious there was still a lot of clearing work being done, bulldozer engines groaned under the weight of the large slabs of steel that rained sparks as they were dragged and pushed aside.

Julie somehow squeezed them through, and he turned to watch the men working away at the site. While everyone else was getting ready to celebrate, these guys were going to be stuck here, picking up the pieces. Somebody had to, of course, but that was rough.

He turned back as they took a side road to the Colonel's residence, and passed a large group of people on their way to the celebration. A few people just stared at them as they passed, a few shouted out and waved, with big grins on their faces. It wasn't often anyone drove a regular car through the city, least of all a convertible, so they stood out a mile.

They finally pulled up across the road from Julie's home, and she cut the engine and swiveled in her seat to face him.

"You okay with this place?" she asked, pointing over his shoulder.

They'd set him up with a room in a building across from Julie's house, something very simple with a cot, a bookshelf, and a sink. It had a communal kitchen and a shared bathroom, and he wasn't that surprised to find he'd be sharing the place with a group of newly living from the stadium. The thought was comforting in a way, although the few he'd actually met that first day out of the hospital treated him a little strange. Not so much in what they said, because they didn't speak all that much, but more in the way they would look at him, and watch him as he passed. Something of awe, of reverence almost, that made him feel odd.

Then he found out that Marcus was one of his roommates, and life got that much better. He hadn't had a chance to see him yet though, because his friend spent most of his time at the stadium.

R looked up at the four-story building and nodded back to her, "It's cool. I'm glad I'm not too far."

She smiled at him, "Yeah, me too."

They grabbed the boxes from the back of the car and headed up to his floor, squeezing past a lady with crazy tattoos in the hallway. She watched them both pass and stared after them a while, enough to make Julie turn to him and frown.

"Why is she staring?" she asked.

"I think she knows who we are, that we started it," he offered. But it was just a guess. He couldn't remember her specifically and wasn't sure if she was in the group M brought from the airport or not.

"Oh." Julie looked back at the woman, who finally smiled at them, and turned away.

They reached his room, and R opened the door for Julie. As she entered and took in the small, empty space she frowned back at him.

"It's not exactly homey."

R shrugged and followed her in, setting the big box down against the far wall.

Julie rolled her eyes at his shrug. "Seriously. This place has none of the charm of your 747 bachelor pad."

That made him laugh. "My bachelor pad?"

"That's what it was!" she giggled, handing him the record player. "You  _were_  single after all."

"I was dead," he said with a smirk, "I don't think that counts."

Gently, he placed the player on top of the bookshelf. It sat awkwardly, but would probably be okay there, at least until he got something better. It was strange for it to be in this small dark room, not on a plane surrounded by piles of junk. If he was really honest, it felt a little lonely.

"Hey," Julie said, coming up beside him, "You sure you're okay here? This has got to be weird for you."

He looked at her and sighed. "Everything is weird for me Julie." Then he groaned, "Jesus, that sounded really self-pitying. I didn't mean it like that."

She squeezed in close to him. "It's okay. I know." She looked down at his hand, turning it in her own, and echoed his sigh, "I try, but I don't think I could ever imagine what it feels like for you."

"Hey," he said, and she looked up at him. "You understand me more than you know. And it's going to be weird for a while. Nobody can help that. Just..." he looked down, feeling suddenly awkward, "thanks for being here with me. I don't know what I would do without you."

Julie drew in closer, wrapping her arms around him. "R... I wouldn't be anywhere else."

He looked at her then, and she had the most beautiful smile on her face, her blue eyes shimmering with emotion. Love radiated from her, and he felt himself respond, his own fire drawn by her incredible flame. His heart thrummed suddenly, sending a wave of heat across his skin, and he leaned in, engulfing her lips with his own.

She kissed him back with the same need, and all he wanted at that moment was to be a part of her, to share the same space, the same heart, the same skin. A sound escaped him as they tasted each other, a low moan, and he grasped her behind and lifted her up off the floor, pressing her hard against him as he grew hard. Julie gasped against his mouth, wrapping her legs around his own, pressing against his hardness urgently. Her hands worked their way under his shirt, squeezing against the muscles of his lower back, her cool touch making his skin quiver, and he lost himself in her, his mouth traveling down her soft throat to the hollow there, then searching lower as he lifted her up against him.

She cried out and they staggered backwards against the bed, frantically removing their second skins, desperate for the heat of each other, for the soul of the other.

The world fell away from them as their bodies entwined in a frenzy of love.


	29. Coming Together

Eventually they surfaced, wrapped in each other, hearts and breaths slowing to a peaceful rhythm. R buried his face in Julie's hair as she lay against him, her hand slowly circling over his chest, and they rested together for a while, happy in the closeness and silence.

"R?" came Julie's voice.

His eyes slowly blinked open. Shifting slightly he rubbed his hand over his face.

"Sorry," he mumbled, smiling sheepishly at her. "Guess I fell asleep."

Julie smiled back, "That's okay. I like watching you sleep."

R kissed her softly on the forehead, then propped a hand behind his head and took a look around the room.

"I like this place better now."

Julie laughed, "Yeah, me too. But..."

"What?" he asked.

"It needs more stuff," she finished.

R laughed, "More stuff? I thought you didn't like my hoarding?"

"I never said I didn't like it!" she giggled, "It's just... I miss it."

He smirked, "Well, I'll bring some more stuff over." Glancing around the room again, he sighed dramatically. "I have more serious things to worry about though."

Julie arched a curious eyebrow, "Oh? Like what?"

"Shaving."

Julie laughed as she spoke, "Shaving?"

R grinned at her, enjoying her laugh. "Yeah. Also, bathing. Brushing my teeth, all that bathroom stuff."

She giggled through his whole list, and shook her head. "That's the serious stuff?"

"It is when you haven't had to do it for ages. I'm not going to have time to do anything else!"

Julie lost it, laughing against his chest, and he joined her. It felt great, and he relaxed against the bed, feeling content and happy.

_This moment. I want to keep this moment, always._

Her giggles subsided and she smiled up at him. "Hey," she said.

"Yeah?"

"I love you," she said softly, and her face grew just a little more serious, her eyes wide and hopeful.

He froze. The look she'd just given him, what she'd said, he'd experienced it before. But it wasn't his memory. It was one of many he'd tried desperately to bury, even as he worked so hard to revive his own. A memory he'd stolen, with a life he'd stolen. From Perry. Julie had looked up at her old boyfriend, with that same hopeful look, with those same words.

The perfect moment was shattered, and his heart grew cold, dread coiling in his gut like a parasitic worm. The horror of what he'd done flooded through him as Perry's last moments of memory - the fear and pain he'd felt, his death as his skull had been crushed - clawed up from where he'd buried them and overwhelmed his mind.

Suddenly R felt like retching. He couldn't explain any of this to Julie either, she wouldn't understand.

A frown crossed her face. "What's wrong?"

No, he couldn't take this. He had to get away from here. "I... I-I can't..." Rolling from her, he stumbled out of the bed, and quickly gathered his clothes.

"R? What the hell?" She sat up and watched him, not understanding, the hurt clear in her eyes.

"I'm sorry Julie..." he mumbled, his throat closing up, as he frantically pulled on his clothes. "I'm sorry, I can't..."

He ran from the room and down the hall, slamming open the door to the stairwell. As it shut behind him he heard her yell his name, and he only ran faster, taking the stairs two at a time, desperate to be out of this building, out of this place. Away from people.

The night was cool against his skin as he burst out of the double doors and onto the sidewalk, straight into a group of newly living. Gasps of recognition came from the people around him, and a woman reached out to touch his arm. The touch made his skin crawl, and he jerked away, looking up into her hurt eyes before fleeing again, running through streets he'd never been on before, trying to head towards the wall, but not even sure where he was anymore. Images haunted him, driving him on, every life he'd ever taken flashing before him, the flaring embers of the memories of hundreds of souls.

Hopelessly lost, his breath coming in ragged gasps, and desperate to avoid the group of revelers heading up the street his way, he fled into a nearby alley that yawned like the black mouth of a corpse.

The darkness swallowed him like a heavy blanket, and he slowed, his hand grasping at the worn brick wall as he stumbled down the narrow alley. He had no idea where it led, or where he was going, and could barely see his hand in front of his face. He just wanted to be free of the pain, the horrible guilt that sank like lead in his gut. Finally spent, his heart thudding painfully, he crumpled against the wall, sliding to the cold concrete ground and drawing his legs to his chest.

Seeking the night sky high above the walls around him, he watched the stars glittering in a sea of black. What the hell was he doing? What the hell had he just done to Julie? Jesus, he'd just left her there, and all she'd done was say...

He groaned, and dropped his head onto his arms, wanting to curl into a little ball and disappear. He couldn't take it. Couldn't take the pain of what he'd done, the hurt he'd caused, the people he'd... killed. Julie may have forgiven him for Perry, but he hadn't forgiven himself. Not for Perry, not for any of them. Faces and stolen memories crowded his mind again, and he squeezed his eyes shut, groaning against the onslaught, tears starting to fall.

"I'm so goddamn sorry," he whispered to the darkness, to the ghosts, and broke down, sobbing openly for the first time in eight years.

Grief shook his body for a long while, until he slowly picked up the sound of footsteps to his left.

Someone was coming down the alley towards him.

R choked back the sobs, frantically wiping the tears from his face as he sniffed, and tried to decide if he was going to run. He didn't want anyone near. He just wanted to be alone.

"Hey," came a soft male voice from his left, and a shadowy figure stopped a few feet away. "Are you okay?"

The man's voice was warm, concerned, and stirred something in R that he didn't quite understand. The darkness wouldn't let him make out much, but he could tell the man was much older than himself.

He wanted to say yes, he was fine, please go away, but that's not what came out of his mouth.

"No," he said quietly, and blinked, not understanding why he would say that to a complete stranger. Talking to someone was the furthest thing from his mind.

"Mind me asking what's up?" the older man said, and crouched against the far wall of the alley.

As R listened to the man's voice, that feeling came again. A desire to hear him talk some more. He felt drawn by the sound, some quality there that he couldn't quite place.

"No," he whispered, staring hard at the figure across from him, wishing he had a light.

The man chuckled. "Alright. I don't mean to pry, I just heard you as I was walking home. Thought maybe you could use someone to talk to."

R found himself nodding to the man's words, and was surprised to find tears welling in his eyes again. Who was this man? Why was he having this effect on him? What was it about that voice? When he'd said 'home', something had just lit up inside.  _Why?_

"I... I was a corpse," he said finally, releasing the words in a shuddering sigh. "I hurt a lot of people, and I... it's hard... to live with that." The tears welled again, and his throat grew tight as he wrestled with the grief in his chest, not wanting to cry in front of whoever this man was.

Even in the darkness, he sensed the sudden stillness of the man's shape against the far wall. He'd obviously said too much, the man clearly hadn't known he'd been one of the dead and was probably wondering why the hell he was sitting across from someone like that in a dark alley.

R dropped his head to his knees again, overwhelmed by all of the frustration, guilt and sadness of the day. Words spilled from him without thought, "I'm sorry dad, I just..."

The man drew in a sharp breath.

R's mind stuttered. What had just come out of his mouth? What did he just say?

"S-son?"

The man's voice, and that one word, drew R up through every fragment of memory he had of the most important man in his life, and snapped the pieces together with crystal clarity.

His mouth fell open, and he looked up from his arms at the man who was his father.

"Dad?" he whispered, so quietly he wasn't actually sure he'd said anything at all.

His father sobbed suddenly, a brief, heart breaking sound, and flung himself forward, reaching out to R.

R backed up against the wall, all of it suddenly too much, the emotions too much for his body, his mind, to hold, until his dad touched the side of his cheek. That touch, the warm roughness of his dad's palm against his face, spread through him in a powerful wave, pulling every memory of his past life to the surface, healing the scattered, shattered fragments, drawing his being together into one startlingly clear whole.

R gasped, his eyes wide with sudden understanding, and frantically grasped his father's hand. "Dad!"

"Oh my god..." his dad cried, pulling him to his chest, "I found you... I finally found you..." His voice broke away to tears, as he kissed his son's head, burying his face in his hair.

"Dad!" the young man who had been R cried, and wrapped his arms around his father, holding on to him tightly, desperately. Tears streamed from his eyes, soaking into his dad's jacket as he sobbed against him, releasing the pent up grief and horror of their years of separation in a rush. Powerless against the sudden wave of emotion, he could only cling to his father and hold on for the ride.

"I've got you," his dad whispered against his head, rocking him gently for what seemed like forever, "I've got you son..."

He nodded against his father's chest, and his sobs slowly subsided, his grief completely and utterly spent. An overwhelming weariness claimed him. Gathered in his dad's strong arms, feeling warm, safe, and completely whole for the first time in too many years, he relaxed so deeply that the world shrank away to nothing but his dad's heartbeat.

Then he fell into the deepest sleep of his life.


	30. A Heart Made Whole

The clearing had taken a lot longer than any of them had thought it would at the west gate, but they'd finally finished the job. They'd driven the bulldozers back to the holding yard, and Frank had waved goodbye, lit up a smoke and headed off to join the party in the center of town. Mark didn't follow. The work had left him exhausted and just not up for crowds or the noise. He'd have to catch up with Brandon tomorrow, and ask how things had gone with Sarah.

Heading home, he passed a few groups of people celebrating, and echoed their cheers and waves. The whole city was buzzing with hope, and it felt great. It felt amazing, actually, to have played a part in breaking the wall. People were going to be talking about it for generations to come. That made him proud.

He was only about a block from home when he passed a small alleyway and heard a strange sound, something so incongruous to the mood of the night that he stopped and strained to make sure he wasn't just hearing things.

No, it came again, and tugged at him. Someone was crying. A deeply heartbreaking expression of grief, and he found himself drawn to it, into that dark opening. A small voice inside warned that it wasn't exactly safe, but he ignored it. There was something about that sound...

The cries faded as he walked down the passage, his eyes still trying to adjust to the utter darkness, and he figured whoever was crying had probably heard him. Slowly he started to make out the walls of the alleyway, and against the one to his right, a figure seated, legs drawn up close.

He couldn't make out anything else, but he wanted to see if he could help, and asked the person, the young man by the sound of his crying, if they were okay.

Mark was surprised when the kid seemed to want to talk. He hadn't actually expected that, but it made him happy. If he could lift this kid's mood tonight, maybe it would lift his own. Nobody should be stuck in a dark alley crying like that, especially today.

He crouched down to listen, and the kid started to talk. About being dead, and the guilt he was carrying around for what he'd done.

But he found he wasn't really listening to his words. There was something about the young man's voice that made him freeze in place. Something terribly, wonderfully familiar.

And then the kid dropped his head to his arms and said the word that floored him so completely he forgot how to breathe.

The boy said 'dad'. The young man who sounded so much like his son, called him... dad.

Mark's heart trembled in his chest. "S-son?" he said, his voice shaking with hope.

Slowly, the kid's head rose from his arms, and so softly he barely heard it, that incredible word came again.

"Dad?"

 _Oh my god._  The hope in his heart flared into a fire. His son was sitting in front of him. The eldest who'd died in his arms so long ago was here.  _Dear god._  The grief he'd held for so long burst from him suddenly, but he choked it back, and rushed forward, desperate to hold his boy. His son seemed frightened at first, but something changed in him the minute he made contact, and his son's hands closed tightly around his own.

The touch made his heart swell, and pulled his lost boy into his arms and held him close, crying against him. He'd found him. He'd finally found his son. As the young man embraced him back, his son's body shook in deep sobs, releasing something he'd obviously held onto for a very long time.

God, he couldn't imagine what his son had gone through, and from what was coming from him, it was horrible. Holding his boy close, he rocked him gently, letting him know he was here, that he had him. Nodding softly, his son grew slowly quiet in his arms, the sobs turning to deep sighs until finally the tension seemed to melt away, and he felt his boy's arms relax and fall from him.

For a moment, he was back at the airport on that horrible night, and a terrible fear gripped him. But the sound of his son's deep, rhythmic breathing made him realize that incredibly, his boy had simply fallen asleep.

Mark let his son's head relax back against his arm, and gently brushed the hair from his temple. The tears filled his eyes again as the true enormity of what had just happened sank in. His son was  _alive_.

He wanted desperately to see his son's face in the light. Moving slowly, not wanting to wake him, he gathered him up, and stood. A grunt escaped him with the effort, but his boy didn't stir.

As he strode out of the alleyway, the strangeness of the moment was not lost on him. His son was the last person he had carried in this way, the night he had died in his arms. The fear trickled back with the thought, and as he walked he had to keep looking down at his son's face, listening for the soft breath, checking for the bright flush of life in his skin. But it was okay. His son was alive.

His son was alive.

Finally, he reached their building and pushed himself to scale the stairs to the second floor. Every glance down at his son in the pale lights of the hallway made his heart jump.  _He hasn't changed! He hasn't aged! Dear god!_  Cradling his boy close, he shouldered open the door to the apartment, and staggered to the back room, his breath coming in hard gasps.

Swinging around to the far side of the room, he gently lowered his son onto his own bed, and switched on the bedside lamp. He settled his boy's head against the pillow and straightened his legs so he lay on his back. Always the tallest in their family, his son's feet dangled over the end, and the sight made him smile.

The night finally caught up with him, and Mark dropped against the bedside, his breath heavy, his heart beating a pounding rhythm against his chest. Closing his eyes he focused on his breathing until the pounding lessened, then looked up at his boy.

His son's face was turned towards him, relaxed in sleep, his eyelashes clumped with tears. The sight stunned him, and he reached out to his boy, sweeping the hair from his forehead, cradling his cheek, and started to cry.

The faint scars of the bus accident were mere shadows of what they'd been when he'd seen his boy last, a haunted specter of a corpse. His boy's skin was flushed, with no trace of the death that had claimed him, outside of a slight tinge under his brow. His boy breathed again, lived again.

He'd come back to him.

He had his miracle. Smiling through the tears, he slowly stood, his joints aching and stiff, and pulled a chair over to the side of the bed. Taking his son's hand in his own, he relaxed back in the chair and wept quietly as he watched him sleep.

* * *

_And that was the big reunion, well at least, part of it ;) The chapter before this one is basically my favorite of the entire fic._


	31. Looking for Answers

"And then what happened?" Nora asked, her voice rising in pitch, clearly irritated for her friend.

Julie sat on her bed and cradled her head in her hands, the memory of the moment crushing her. "He just... took off."

"What the  _fuck_?! Why?"

"I don't know, he didn't say. He just ran out the door." Julie looked up at her friend, her eyes red, "He looked horrified, Nora."

She didn't understand. All she'd said was...  _I love you._

Why had that affected him so much? That look on his face as she'd said it... where had that come from?

Nora blinked, and opened her mouth as if to say something, but shut it instead.

Julie twisted the tassels of her pillow in her hands. "I can't find him anywhere... I ran after him, but by the time I got downstairs he was gone. I drove around a bit too. I don't know what to do... I don't know what I did."

"YOU didn't do anything, Jules," Nora said, and came around the side of the bed to sit by her. "He's obviously got some weird shit going on in his head that he couldn't handle. I mean, he was a zombie, he's going to be a bit fucked up no matter what."

Julie sighed. She could always count on her friend to be so bluntly wise.

Would this happen every time they were together? Would he always be haunted by the past? It had hurt. He'd left her there, sitting naked on his bed in a dark empty room. She'd stumbled after him, her heart reeling, but throwing on her clothes had cost her some time, and he was nowhere to be seen when she finally got out on the street.

There had been a group of once-dead outside, and one of them, a woman with black hair and dark eyes, had turned and pointed down the street, while the rest had just stared at her. Feeling distinctly uncomfortable, she'd mumbled a quick thank you to the lady and run off, only to realize she had no idea where she was headed next. He had disappeared.

Her heart felt like it'd been torn from her chest as she stood there, her breath making clouds in the cool night air, and realized that he'd just run out on her. He'd run away  _from her_.

Bringing her hand to her mouth, she'd started to cry, the pain of that understanding hitting her hard. Her mind worked to try and understand why. Was it too much? Should she not have said what she did? No, it couldn't be that, there was something else in his expression, some kind of horror that had hurt him so badly he'd had to run. Hugging herself, she walked back to the building, and quickly ran up to his room, hoping he'd come back. He hadn't.

She'd come back to the convertible then, and started sweeping back and forth through the nearby streets. But she couldn't find him, and he hadn't come back to the room. That's when she'd come home and called Nora on the com.

And here they were, and he was still gone. She'd checked his window across the road a few times now. No movement, no light.

This had never happened between them before, and she was scared. What if he'd been hurt? There was talk of a group of idiots running around threatening the once-dead. Could they have cornered him? Attacked him? God, she couldn't stand this.

She jumped up out of bed, startling Nora.

"What are you doing?" her friend asked.

"I have to find him, he might be hurt," Julie answered, her mind racing over other places he might be. Should they hit the hospital? Maybe he'd left the city? Was it that bad that he would do that? Her face crumpled and she started crying again.

Nora stood and pulled her into a hug. "Hey, hey..." she soothed, "It's going to be okay, we'll find him. I'm sure he's fine."

Julie rested her head against her friends shoulder and nodded quietly.

_He had to be.  
_

Because she was going to kick his ass for leaving her naked on his bed.


	32. Just What Brothers Do

A deep rumbling sound echoed from somewhere nearby. It was a rhythmic and steady sound, and he slowly rose from the depths of sleep, his curiosity growing, knowing he'd heard that noise before.

As his mind became more aware, he realized what he was hearing.

Snoring.

His eyes blinked open slowly, stiff with dried tears, and the room resolved from a blur to a bedroom, lit by a dull yellow glow. Sitting slumped in a chair next to the bed he was laying on, was his dad.

His father was sleeping, his head resting awkwardly on his chin, deep sawing breaths erupting from his throat.

He grinned. God, his dad was loud. His mom had always hated dad's snoring. She use to say it was enough to wake the dead.

He blinked.  _Holy crap._  For one wonderful moment, he'd forgotten he used to be dead. It was as if none of it had ever happened, and he was home, visiting from college for the weekend, and they'd probably go up to the lake for few hours, and...

It struck him then, and he sucked in a sharp breath with the shock of it, that he remembered  _everything._  His life before he died and the strange shadow life he lived as one of the dead, had merged together into one incredible whole.

He was himself again, and he'd found his dad. He was finally...  _home_.

Eyes wide, he sat up and stared at his father, finally seeing the change time had wrought on him. His brown hair and heavy brows were flecked with grey, and deep furrows lined his forehead and cheeks. Bags sat heavy under his father's closed eyes, speaking of sorrow and worry.

Eight years. It had been eight years since he'd seen his father. Lost years, and he could see their weight in his father's face.

He frowned, his eyes starting to water again. That wasn't fair.

The few times he'd looked in a mirror, he looked exactly the same as he had before he died. Death had apparently frozen him in time, locking him in place, and now he'd lost eight years of his father's life to it.

And his brother? Where was Brandon? He looked around the room again. There was another bed, against the wall, under the windows. His brother's? God, was he still alive? Was he okay?

Something caught his eye on a bookshelf against the far wall. Something round and white.

Stunned, he slowly slid off the bed, careful not to wake his father, and walked over.

It was his baseball, the one he'd had to leave behind at the shelter. The one that hadn't been there when he'd returned. He drew his fingers across the soft leather and smiled as his eyes blurred in new tears. His hand drifted over the rest of the items on the shelf, lingering on his books, his single record, and finally, the photo album.

Wiping his face, he flipped open the cover and a small sound left his throat. There was his photo, the one taken from the plane, the one he'd thought was lost for good.

His mother smiled up at him, and he drew his finger across her image, smiling back at her through his tears.  _I found them, mom. I found them._

The snoring behind him rose to a deafening crescendo, then faded, and he laughed, turning back to look at his dad. His father was still asleep, slumped in the chair.

He turned back to his stuff, then glanced around the room again and out the windows above the other bed.

Where was this place anyway? Apparently still in the city. How'd he get here? The last he remembered...

 _Oh god. Julie._  His face fell. He'd just left her lying there. Jesus, she must have been so hurt... what the hell was he going to do? He had to find her, let her know what happened, and apologize.

He looked back at his father again. There was no way he could leave him right now. He'd find some way to let her know when morning came, and he'd make it up to her. He'd do his best to explain. Julie deserved that. Hopefully it wouldn't mean the end of what they had. He couldn't take that.

Swallowing against a sudden lump in this throat, he realized he was terribly thirsty. He had to get something to drink. Curious where the kitchen was, he walked into the darkness of the other room. The light switch eluded him, but he could make out what looked like a tank and a spigot against the far wall, with some cups in a cabinet above.

As he was pouring a glass from the tank, the door to the apartment clicked open. He jumped in surprise, the water splashing over his hand and onto the floor.

The figure entered, glancing his way, then went to the fridge and opened the door. The light illuminated the man's face as he stooped over and grabbed something inside.

He blinked and stared at the man with the beard, not quite recognizing him. A friend of his dad's? There was something about his eyes...

"You should have come dad, it was awesome," the man said, closing the fridge door and walking over to flop on the couch.

He froze, and his jaw fell open.

Brandon.

The cup fell from his hands, clattering to the floor, and he made a choking sound. The man with the beard, who was now almost as tall as he, who'd looked as old... no...  _older_  in the dull light of the fridge... was his little brother.

Brandon looked over, the soda pressed against his lips, then lowered it. "Dad? You okay?"

The sound of their father snoring drifted from the other room.

He walked stiffly to his brother, trying not to cry. "Brandon..." he whispered.

His brother jerked up on the couch as he neared. "Holy shit!" he yelled, and jumped to his feet, his eyes as wide as plates, his mouth open.

"Bro, it's... it's me," he said, wrestling with tears, his words coming as choked gasps. Desperate to hold his little brother, he reached out to gather him in a hug.

Brandon roared, his face twisted in fear, and swung the soda bottle, smashing it against the side of his head. Agony flared into brilliant life as it shattered against his skull, dropping him like a stone to the hard floor.

Dimly, the sound reaching him from what felt like very far away, he heard his brother cry out for his dad, and something passed over him, the vibration of footsteps nearby thundering through him, amplifying the agony in his brain.

Groaning, he curled into a ball, and tried to make the world stop spinning and screaming. It ignored him completely, and he started to feel sick. What the hell just happened? He was going to hug his brother, and then his head exploded.

More voices came to him, their urgent cadences slicing into his brain. He groaned again.  _Shut up, please shut up..._

"He attacked me dad! How the frig did he get in, he-"

"Brandon, what the hell did you do?"

A small click, and the room exploded in light, scrambling his senses and searing through the furious chaos of his head. "Ooowww," he groaned, rolling over again.

"Oh my god! Son!"

"Holy shit... he's... he's..."

Strong arms gathered him up off the floor, and he cradled his head as he was pulled to the couch. It slowly dawned on him what had happened, his brother's face as he'd neared, was... terrified. He'd thought he was still dead.

"Bran... sorry... was stupid..." he mumbled, and tried to open his eyes. The light speared through and he quickly closed them again. He could feel someone's hands gingerly touching the side of his head, and it  _hurt_.

A choked cry came from his right, and suddenly he was engulfed, someone was crying against him and squeezing him hard. Brandon. Despite the pain, he grinned and held his brother close, the tears rising to his eyes again. It felt so good.

Something terribly cold pressed against his head and he hissed, drawing away.

"Hey, no, you need this. Stay still." It was his father. Blinking against the light he looked up and saw his dad pressing an icepack against his head. It freaking hurt, but he nodded and relaxed against the couch, letting his dad do what he needed to do. The attention made him indescribably happy.

"I'm so sorry, I didn't know, I didn't know... god, you're bleeding..." his brother cried, starting to sob again.

He opened his eyes and finally looked at his brother in the light, and new tears fell. "Bran... s'okay," he mumbled through the tears, and grabbed his brother close. God, he had missed him so much. He'd changed so much too - another eight years lost. Where the hell was the little kid he'd left at the airport? Memories of their last night flicked through his mind, and he remembered Brandon handing him the ipod, how much it had meant to him.

He frowned. "I lost it..." he said, not really to anyone in particular, the thought just hit him strongly and the words popped out. He was starting to feel really weird, though the pain in his head was easing, thanks to the ice.

Brandon sniffed and looked at him, "Lost what?"

He looked over and smiled at his brother, "The ipod."

Brandon choked suddenly, then gathered himself. "Yeah, uh... that kinda turned up," he said, and cast a strange look at their father.

He followed the look and his dad smiled at him, but it was a sad smile. He frowned, "What's wrong?"

"Nevermind," his father said softly, and lifted the icepack to take a look. Wincing, he shook his head, "I think we're going to have to take you to the hospital."

He groaned in protest, rolling his eyes, then groaned for real when the room swam again. "Been there... done that... the doctors hate me..." he muttered. Then his head fell back and that was weird, because he hadn't meant for that to happen.

"Yeah, that's it, let's go."

"But... but I just... got here..."

"No buts son, c'mon," his father ordered, and he felt himself lifted up from the couch to his feet. The movement brought up a wave of nausea, which he struggled to hold down, and the pain flared back to life.

Brandon took his other arm, and he looked at his brother. His eyes were so old. So hurt.

"Butts," he said, because his dad had said it and that was funny. He grinned.

A small smile spread across his brother's face. "Jesus, I did a number on you, didn't I."

"Been shot... stabbed, shot, this... nothin'," R mumbled. God he felt horrible. If they weren't careful he was going to vomit all over them.

His dad grabbed him around the waist, supporting him as they walked to the door. "Bran, get the door?"

"Yep."

He was starting to have some serious flashbacks to the night he'd died, the time his father had run with him across the field supporting him like this. The nausea wasn't helping, but he was at least able to feel his legs. He tried to shrug it off and just focus on walking, one foot in front of the other foot in front of the other...

His head dipped, and the lights went out for a moment, then someone was talking to him, and he focused on the words, the textures, the sounds, trying to make them meaningful. It didn't happen, so he lost interest in it and the world fell away again.


	33. What's In A Name?

"R?"

His eyes flicked open.

_Julie?_

He jerked up and immediately groaned, squeezing his eyes shut as he grabbed his head.  _Ow ow ow..._

"Careful son, just take it easy." His father's voice. A hand pressed gently against his shoulder, pushing him back against what felt like a bed. He didn't resist.

He opened his eyes again, and found himself in a room with a bunch of cots, many of which were full, though the occupants seemed to be sleeping. Around him sat Julie, his Dad, and his brother Brandon.

He smiled, his heart swelling suddenly at seeing them all together. Then he frowned slightly, confused. Wait... why were they all together? He must have passed out. For god's sake, this was getting to be a habit.

"Hey," Julie said softly, and grinned at him. She was holding his hand. He looked down and smiled, rubbing his thumb over the soft webbing between her thumb and forefinger.

"Hey," he said back, then his face fell as he looked up, the words rushing from him, "Oh god Julie, I'm so sorry, I didn't mean to do that to you, I just-"

Julie squeezed his hand, interrupting him, "It's okay R, it's okay."

He shook his head urgently, then winced, "No, it's  _not_  okay, I just lost it and ran out and left you there and-"

"And found your dad, and your brother..." she finished, and grinned.

He stopped, then slowly smiled. "Well... yeah." He turned to look at his family and his smile grew into a grin.

"This is Julie," he told them, squeezing her hand as he introduced her. Then he turned back to look her in the eye and say the words that were long overdue. "I love her."

Her face burst into the most beautiful smile, her eyes softening, and he continued because she had to know, had to understand. "I've loved her since I first saw her. She's the reason I'm here, the reason I'm alive, and she is  _everything_  to me."

Tears were making little trails down her cheek as he spoke, and he reached out to brush them aside.

"Somehow, we picked up on that," his brother said with a smirk. "And we've already met."

His dad smiled and nodded at Julie. "She picked us up son, helped us get to the hospital quicker. We've done the introductions already."

"Well too bad, I'm going to do them anyway," he said and grinned. He gestured to his father, "Julie, this is my dad, his name's Mark. Dad, Julie."

Julie laughed, and nodded at his father. "Hi Mark."

"Hi Julie, it's good to meet you. Properly." His father's eyes wrinkled as he grinned.

"And this is Brandon, my brother."

Brandon threw a little salute her way and smirked. "I'm the one who bashed his head in, oh wait, you already knew that."

He gave his brother a little kick from the bed, and his brother laughed, "Sorry."

"Brandon, this is Julie."

She smiled and waved to his brother.

"The girl I'm going to marry."

Julie gasped then, and squeezed his hand tightly. He turned to her with a shy grin, "Unless.. they don't do that anymore?"

"No... no... they still do that..." she whispered, her face flushed, and they drew together in a gentle kiss.

He pulled back and smiled at her, and his family, his heart incredibly happy.

"There's one more person I have to introduce you to," he said.

She raised an eyebrow, "There is?" She glanced at Mark and Brandon, who just shrugged.

"Yeah."

"Who?"

"Me."

"R..." she gasped, her eyes full of wonder. "You remember your name?"

He grinned and nodded. "Yeah."

"Guess what it is."

Julie laughed. "Didn't we already play this game?"

"Yeah, but I know what it is now! There's a chance you can win!"

"Is it... Romeo?" she said with a grin.

He laughed. "Romeo? Heck no. Where'd you come up with that?"

Julie shrugged, "I dunno, it just seemed to fit, you know, two people in love, from different worlds, struggling to..." she trailed off with a giggle. "Anyway, I already know what your name is."

His mouth fell open. "What? How?"

"Your dad told me."

He turned to his father, his mouth still open. "Dad!"

His father shrugged, "What? She pulled up, called you R, and I corrected her."

"You  _corrected_  her?" he asked, incredulous.

"Yeah. I didn't know you had some silly name thing going on!" His dad laughed.

Julie pulled him back, and stared into his eyes. "I'd still like to meet you properly though."

He smiled at her then, and let out a big sigh. Staring back into the vivid blue eyes of the girl he loved, this incredible woman that he'd clawed his way back from death to be with, surrounded by his family, he realized that his mom had been right after all.

_Everything's going to be okay._

"Hi Julie," he said, "it's amazing to meet you. My name's..."

He paused. This was the first time he'd said his own name in eight years. It was a little... strange.

"...Rowan."

Julie's eyes welled with tears as he spoke, and she smiled softly.

"Good to meet you Rowan. I know this might seem a little forward, since we've only just met, but I think I'm going to kiss you."

"You think so, huh?"

"I know so."

Grinning, he leaned in as she pressed her lips against his, and cradled her jaw with his palm. The kiss felt like warm sunshine after a storm, and he lost himself in it, everything else falling away as he pulled her close.

"Uh guys," Brandon spoke up.

"Get a room?"

_FINIS._

* * *

_Hope everyone enjoyed the story. I had an amazing time writing it. It's really the first fanfic I've ever finished, and the first to take such a strong hold of me. It literally would not let me go until it was done. I got to see the characters I loved doing so much more than in the book, and the movie, and I'm totally grateful for that. Whether or not I've communicated it as well as I saw it, I'm not sure ;)_

_If you've come this far, thank you, hope you enjoyed the ride, and I hope you'll leave a little review to let me know what you thought.  
_

_Regarding R's name. I was actually pretty torn between two, but I chose Rowan as it's very closely associated with the color red, and it's just a beautiful name. ;) Brandon's name is also a little celtic. The nickname they use for him, Bran, means raven in gaelic.  
_

_I'm off to play some DayZ now, where I'll probably get clobbered and nom'd on by zombies as I crawl around in people lawns scavenging for a coke. You know, I never liked zombies before Warm Bodies. And really, I still don't. But I've certainly surrounded myself with everything zombie since then. Thanks a lot Isaac and Jonathan! Sheesh!  
_

_Take care all!_

_\- Jen_

_UPDATE:_

_Just wanted to say thanks to Melissa for the lovely review. :) I haven't quite clicked 'complete' yet because I can feel an epilogue percolating in my brain atm. We'll see if it pans out, and I'll post it if so._

_FINAL UPDATE:_

_No longer contemplating moving this to a T rating, as I've just done that, and it was actually a little easier than I thought it'd be. Originally had thought that sometimes, especially during a zombie apocalypse, 'F**k!' is the only thing you can say. %)_

_The epilogue is finished, and it's a monstrous weighty beast. Have to edit, and then I'll set this to complete and post it._

_As always, THANKS FOR READING, and please leave a review, if you can ;)_


	34. The Little Brown Bear

Jesus, he had a lot of junk.

It was just a little frustrating, having spent eight years collecting stuff from all over the city and beyond, and somehow having absolutely nothing of value he could trade for what he needed right now.

A ring.

Why hadn't he hoarded shiny things? Weapons? Medicine? Any of those things would give him some negotiating power with the traders in the market. But no. He had to collect plastic dinosaurs, golfing trophies, action figures, snowglobes, a mobile of the solar system, old books and torn magazines. A bobble headed dog.

_Useful._

Perry's watch had been about the most valuable thing he'd ever taken, but of course, he'd given that back to Julie, and truthfully wanted nothing more to do with it.

Grumbling in frustration, R abandoned the pile he'd been pawing his way through, tossing a pair of shaggy earmuffs over his shoulder in disgust, and moved further down the plane, shoving aside a single ski draped across a row of seats, before rummaging through a basket full of random chess pieces, marbles, colorful dice and an old film container.

"Argh," R groaned, and shifted further back, to a part of the plane he hadn't been through in years.

The smell got worse, and he wondered if perhaps he'd left a piece of someone in another basket back here, a little discarded crumb of brain or something that'd fallen between piles of books and was casually rotting away. The thought was meant to be light hearted, but quickly turned heavy and he frowned, throwing a spiked soccer shoe at a teetering pile of books nearby and knocking them over.

There was nothing here. It was stupid to keep looking.

But something pulled him down a couple more rows, to a window seat piled with CD cases, an old toy record player and a dented music box.

Sitting atop the box, bathed in the dull light of winter through dirty glass, and sagging forward, its little black bead eyes seemingly staring out the round window, was a little brown bear.

R stopped.

"Shit," he said, with a long sigh.

Hesitantly, he reached out and closed his fingers around the spiky, matted fur, dark with dried blood.

And remembered.

As the memories swamped him, he squeezed his eyes shut, and stepped back, his mouth twisting in pain that had nothing to do with physical hurt.

"Shit," he said again, and opened his eyes, looking down at the bear clenched between his fingers, the knuckles paling as he held it tight.

He turned then, sweeping his gaze around the entire plane, his eyes flicking from item to item, every piece of his collection speaking to him now in voices he didn't want to hear, and he started to move, stumbling over the books he'd knocked over, pushing his way to the door of the plane.

Because he had to get out. He had to get away from here.

From the bear, and her story.

From all of their stories.

As he finally neared the exit, he took one last look around the plane, and down at the bear in his hand. Setting it gingerly on the nearest seat, he straightened and spoke to the empty cabin, the seats filled now with the ghosts in his head.

"I'm sorry," he whispered.

Then he stepped out into the dull light of a cold winter's day, and closed the door hard behind him.

TO BE CONTINUED...

* * *

 

_Finally adding my sequel on this site :D Sorry! It's so long, it's been a little intimidating..._

_It's called 'The Little Brown Bear' if you're interested. Very very long, very dark, very twisty._

_If you've enjoyed this - please consider leaving a comment of any length. Thanks! :D_


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